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| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-14 19:55:56 -0700 |
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| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-14 19:55:56 -0700 |
| commit | 944614b0a750b19199371fb0623536e23bd30411 (patch) | |
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font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 125%; +line-height: 1.5;} + +td.number {text-align: right;} +td.item {text-align: right; padding-right: .5em;} + +table.toc {margin-bottom: 4em;} +table.toc td.number {vertical-align: bottom; padding-left: 1em;} +td.part {text-align: center; line-height: 1.75em; padding-top: 1em;} +td.item, table.toc p {text-transform: lowercase; +font-variant: small-caps;} + + +/* conditional */ + +table.toc p {margin-top: 0; margin-left: 2em; text-indent: -2em; +line-height: normal;} + + +/* text formatting */ + +span.dropcap {float: left; padding-right: 0.4em; margin-top: -0.1em; +font-size: 280%;} +span.dropword {margin-left: -1em; text-transform: uppercase;} + +span.author {float: right; clear: right; width: auto; +font-variant: small-caps; white-space: nowrap;} + +span.smallroman {text-transform: lowercase; font-variant: small-caps;} +span.smallcaps, span.firstword {font-variant: small-caps;} + +.smaller {font-size: 88%;} +.smallest {font-size: 75%;} +.larger {font-size: 115%;} +.largest {font-size: 133%;} + + +/* correction popup */ + +ins.correction {text-decoration: none; border-bottom: thin dotted red;} + +/* page number */ + +span.pagenum {position: absolute; right: 2%; font-size: 90%; +font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-align: right; +text-indent: 0em;} + +/* Transcriber's Note */ + +.mynote {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; +font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 90%;} + +div.mynote {margin: 1em 5%; padding: .5em 1em 1em;} +div.mynote a {text-decoration: none;} + +div.endnote {padding: .5em 1em 1em; margin: 1em; border: 3px ridge #A9F; +font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 90%;} + +</style> +</head> + +<body> + + +<pre> + +Project Gutenberg's Modern marriage and how to bear it, by Maud Churton Braby + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Modern marriage and how to bear it + +Author: Maud Churton Braby + +Release Date: March 7, 2010 [EBook #31529] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODERN MARRIAGE AND HOW TO BEAR IT *** + + + + +Produced by Louise Hope, Norbert H. Langkau and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<div class = "mynote"> +<p><a name = "start" id = "start">This text</a> uses UTF-8 (Unicode) +file encoding. If the apostrophes and quotation marks in this paragraph +appear as garbage, you may have an incompatible browser or unavailable +fonts. First, make sure that your browser’s “character set” or “file +encoding” is set to Unicode (UTF-8). You may also need to change the +default font.</p> + +<p>Typographical errors are shown in the text with <ins class = +"correction" title = "like this">mouse-hover popups</ins>. The +inconsistent hyphenization of “re-adjust(ment)” and the variable +spelling of “vice versâ” (with or without circumflex) are unchanged. The +term “anyrate” is always written as a single word.</p> + +<p>The edges of some preliminary pages, mainly advertising, were +damaged. +These pages are shown with the reconstructed text <em>in grey</em>.</p> + +<p class = "center"> +<a href = "#contents">Contents</a><br> +<a href = "#part_I">Modern Marriage...</a><br> +<a href = "#cover">Front Cover</a></p> + + +</div> + + +<div class = "titlepage"> + +<h1>MODERN<br> +MARRIAGE</h1> + +<h3>AND HOW TO BEAR IT</h3> + +<hr class = "fat"> + +<!-- <img src = "images/coverpic.png" width = "360" height = "429" +alt = "portrait"> --> + +<table class = "background" +style = "background-image: url(images/coverpic.png); height: 429px;"> +<tr> +<td class = "bottom header" style = "width: 1em;"> +BY<br> +MAUD<br> +CHURTON<br> +BRABY</td> +<td style = "width: 260px;"> + +</td> +<td class = "bottom right header" style = "width: 2.5em;"> +AUTHOR<br> +OF<br> +“DOWNWARD”</td> +</tr> +</table> + +</div> + +<div class = "prelim"> + +<table summary = "title page"> +<tr> +<td> +<p class = "larger"> +<b>MODERN<br> +MARRIAGE<br> +AND HOW TO<br> +BEAR IT</b></p> +</td> +<td></td> +<td></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td></td> +<td> + <br> + <br> + <br> +  +</td> +<td></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td></td> +<td></td> +<td> +<img src = "images/titlepic.png" width = "99" height = "143" +alt = "publisher's device"></td> +</tr> +</table> + + +<table class = "outline" summary = "text within box"> +<tr> +<th><a name = "reprints" id = "reprints"> +NEW SHILLING REPRINTS</a></th> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class = "hanging"> +<p><b>LOVE INTRIGUES OF ROYAL COURTS.</b> By <span class = +"smallcaps">Thornton Hall</span>.</p> + +<p><b>FALLEN AMONG THIEVES.</b> By <span class = "smallcaps">Stanley +Portal Hyatt</span>.</p> + +<p><b>THE UNCOUNTED COST.</b> By <span class = "smallcaps">Mary +Gaunt</span>.</p> + +<p><b>SIX WOMEN.</b> By <span class = "smallcaps">Victoria +Cross</span>.</p> + +<p><b>DOWNWARD.</b> By <span class = "smallcaps">Maud Churton +Braby</span>.</p> + +<p><b>SCARLET KISS.</b> By <span class = "smallcaps">Gertie de S. +Wentworth-James</span>.</p> + +<p><b>MISS FERRIBY’S CLIENTS.</b> By <span class = "smallcaps">Florence +Warden</span>.</p> + +<p><b>RED LOVE.</b> By <span class = "smallcaps">Gertie de S. +Wentworth-James</span>.</p> + +<p><b>MODERN MARRIAGE AND HOW TO BEAR IT.</b> By <span class = +"smallcaps">Maud Churton Braby</span>.</p> + +<p><b>BIOGRAPHY FOR BEGINNERS.</b> By <span class = "smallcaps">G. K. +Chesterton</span>. With 48 Illustrations.</p> + +<p><b>WHAT MEN LIKE IN WOMEN.</b> By the Author of “How to be Happy +though Married.”</p> + +<p><b>THE SALVING OF A DERELICT.</b> By <span class = +"smallcaps">Maurice Drake</span>.</p> + +<p><b>THE NIGHT-SIDE OF LONDON.</b> By <span class = "smallcaps">Robert +Mackray</span>. With 65 Pictures by <span class = "smallcaps">Tom +Browne</span>.</p> + +<p><b>LADY JIM OF CURZON STREET.</b> By <span class = "smallcaps">Fergus +Hume</span>.</p> + +<p><b>2835 MAYFAIR.</b> By <span class = "smallcaps">Frank +Richardson</span>.</p> + +<p><b>THE WILD WIDOW.</b> By <span class = "smallcaps">Gertie de S. +Wentworth-James</span>.</p> + +<p><b>LETTERS TO A DAUGHTER.</b> By <span class = "smallcaps">Hubert +Bland</span>.</p> + +<p><b>THE GAME OF BRIDGE.</b> By “<span class = "smallcaps">Cut +Cavendish</span>.” With New Rules of Bridge and Auction Bridge.</p> + +<p><b>THE NIGHT-SIDE OF PARIS.</b> By <span class = "smallcaps">E. B. +d’Auvergne</span>. 20 Plates.</p> + +<p><b>THE WEANING.</b> By <span class = "smallcaps">James +Blyth</span>.</p> + +<p><b>THE METHODS OF MR AMES.</b> By the Author of “John Johns.”</p> + +<p><b>THE HAPPY MORALIST.</b> By <span class = "smallcaps">Hubert +Bland</span>.</p> + +<p><b>THE KING AND ISABEL.</b> By the Author of “John Johns.”</p> + +<p><b>THE SINEWS OF WAR.</b> By <span class = "smallcaps">Eden +Phillpotts</span> an<em>d</em> <span class = "smallcaps">Arnold +Bennett</span>.</p> + +<p><b>MODERN WOMAN AND HOW TO MANAGE H<em>ER.</em></b> By <span class = +"smallcaps">Walter Gallichan</span>.</p> +</td> +</tr> +</table> + +<table class = "outline" summary = "text within box"> +<tr> +<td> +<p class = "center"> +<a name = "notices" id = "notices"> +<i><em>PR</em>ESS NOTICES OF</i></a></p> + +<h3>MODERN MARRIAGE<br> +<i>And How to Bear it</i></h3> +</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> +<p class = "center"> +PRESS NOTICES</p> + +<p><b>W. T. Stead in the Review of Reviews.</b>—“Mrs Maud Churton +Braby has achieved a remarkable success. She has written an original +book upon the most threadbare of all subjects, in which she has been as +witty as she is wise . . . packed full of good sense, sound +morality, and admirable advice. It is a book naked and unashamed, +written by a woman of the world with the naïve simplicity of an innocent +child, and arriving on the whole at conclusions worthy of any mother in +Israel; a book full of profound wisdom irradiated by a pleasant wit +and suffused with the glow of a genuine human sympathy.”</p> + +<p><b>“Hubert” in the Sunday Chronicle.</b>—“On the whole I +congratulate Mrs Braby on her book . . . it is the only book +on the subject of Modern Marriage that has not made me feel rather ill +. . . frank, without the slightest indelicacy, and bold +without the least impertinence . . . a real contribution +towards the solution of an intolerably difficult problem.”</p> + +<p><b>Daily Telegraph.</b>—“Lively and frank . . . should prove +instructive as well as readable and provide people with plenty to think +about. The author has read widely, and thought deeply, and has a +sufficiently broad mind to give her conclusions real value +. . . should be read by all who think seriously on this most +<em>s</em>erious subject.”</p> + +<p><b>Standard.</b>—“A good deal of sound thinking has gone to the +book’s composition and it is also illumined by a very kind and tender +spirit.”</p> + +<p><b>Bystander.</b>—“A clever and most entertaining volume . +. . the <em>re</em>ader may be assured of much that is sage and +sound, and much <em>th</em>at is witty.”</p> + +<p><b>Black & White.</b>—“No one has gone so fully and +vigorously <em>into</em> the various problems connected with marriage as +Mrs Braby <em>in he</em>r extremely readable book . . . one of +the most vivid and <em>origin</em>al contributions to the discussion of +a great problem that have <em>appea</em>red for a long time.”</p> + +<p><b><em>Lit</em>erary World.</b>—“Very brightly written, and +even when <em>most a</em>udacious is full of good feeling and good sense +. . . amusing <em>and shre</em>wd . . . clever and +stimulating.”</p> +</td> +</tr> +</table> + +<table class = "outline" summary = "text within box"> +<tr> +<td> +<p class = "center smaller"> +<a name = "downward" id = "downward"> </a><br> +<i>BY THE SAME AUTH<em>OR</em></i></p> + +<h3><b>DOWNWARD:</b></h3> + +<p class = "center">AN ATTEMPT TO PORTRAY A<br> +“SLICE OF LIFE.”</p> + +<p class = "center"> +<i>A NOVEL.</i></p> + +<p class = "center"> +<span class = "smallcaps">By</span> MAUD CHURTON BRABY<br> +(<i>Author of</i> “<span class = "smallcaps">Modern Marriage and How to +Bear it</span>.”)</p> + +<p class = "center largest"> +6s.</p> +</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> +<p><span class = "dropcap">T</span><span class = "dropword">his</span> +is a powerful study of modern life in London, and concerns the hearts +and passions of live men and women. Being the first novel by Mrs Maud +Churton Braby, author of that vivacious an<em>d</em> daring book, +“Modern Marriage and How to Bear it.<em>”</em> As might be expected, +some of the serious problems o<em>f</em> women are dealt with in its +pages. The story concern<em>s</em> the fortunes of brilliant and +undisciplined Dolly who, o<em>n</em> the death of her mother, an +actress, is compelled by t<em>he</em> decree of a mysterious trustee to +go first to a conve<em>nt-</em> school and afterwards become a hospital +nurse. H<em>er</em> temptations and adventures at the Wimpole Street +Nurs<em>ing</em> Home—(in which environment other characters +of <ins class = "correction" title = "or ‘some’?"><em>much</em></ins> +interest appear)—her tragic love affair, and the dep<em>ths +to</em> which it brings her, together with her subse<em>quent</em> +redemption, are related in a manner which ma<em>kes a</em> special +appeal to the heart.</p> +</td> +</tr> +</table> + +</div> +<!-- end div prelim --> + +<div class = "titlepage"> +<h3>MODERN MARRIAG<em>E</em><br> +AND HOW TO BEAR IT</h3> + +<p> </p> + +<h6>BY</h6> + +<h4>MAUD CHURTON BRABY</h4> + +<p> </p> + +<p class = "center"> +“Marriage is the origin and summit of all<br> +civilisation.”—<span class = "smallcaps">Goethe.</span></p> + +<p> </p> + +<p class = "center"> +<i>POPULAR EDITION</i></p> + +<p> </p> + +<h5><span class = "larger">T. WERNER LAURIE</span><br> +CLIFFORD’S INN<br> +LONDON</h5> +</div> + + +<span class = "pagenum">vii</span> + +<h3><a name = "contents" id = "contents"> +CONTENTS</a></h3> + +<table class = "toc" summary = "table of contents"> +<tr> +<td class = "part" colspan = "3"> +<a href = "#part_I">PART I</a><br> +<span class = "smaller">SIGNS OF UNREST</span> +</td> +</tr> +<tr class = "smaller"> +<td><p>CHAP.</p></td> +<td></td> +<td><p>PAGE</p></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class = "item"><a href = "#chapI_I">I.</a></td> +<td><p>THE MUTUAL DISSATISFACTION OF THE SEXES</p></td> +<td class = "number">3</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class = "item"><a href = "#chapI_II">II.</a></td> +<td><p>WHY MEN DON’T MARRY</p></td> +<td class = "number">14</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class = "item"><a href = "#chapI_III">III.</a></td> +<td><p>WHY WOMEN DON’T MARRY</p></td> +<td class = "number">26</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class = "item"><a href = "#chapI_IV">IV.</a></td> +<td><p>THE TRAGEDY OF THE UNDESIRED</p></td> +<td class = "number">42</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class = "part" colspan = "3"> +<a href = "#part_II">PART II</a><br> +<span class = "smaller">CAUSES OF FAILURE</span> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class = "item"><a href = "#chapII_I">I.</a></td> +<td><p>THE VARIOUS KINDS OF MARRIAGE</p></td> +<td class = "number">57</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class = "item"><a href = "#chapII_II">II.</a></td> +<td><p>WHY WE FALL OUT: DIVERS DISCORDS</p></td> +<td class = "number">68</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class = "item"><a href = "#chapII_III">III.</a></td> +<td><p>THE AGE TO MARRY</p></td> +<td class = "number">85</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class = "item"><a href = "#chapII_IV">IV.</a></td> +<td><p>WILD OATS FOR WIVES</p></td> +<td class = "number">89</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class = "item"><a href = "#chapII_V">V.</a></td> +<td><p>A PLEA FOR THE WISER TRAINING OF GIRLS</p></td> +<td class = "number">101</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class = "item"><a href = "#chapII_VI">VI.</a></td> +<td><p>‘KEEPING ONLY TO HER’—THE CRUX OF MATRIMONY</p></td> +<td class = "number">109</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class = "part" colspan = "3"> +<span class = "pagenum">viii</span> +<a href = "#part_III">PART III</a><br> +<span class = "smaller">SUGGESTED ALTERNATIVES</span> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class = "item"><a href = "#chapIII_I">I.</a></td> +<td><p>LEASEHOLD MARRIAGE À LA MEREDITH</p></td> +<td class = "number">119</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class = "item"><a href = "#chapIII_II">II.</a></td> +<td><p>LEASEHOLD MARRIAGE IN PRACTICE: A DIALOGUE IN 1999</p></td> +<td class = "number">129</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class = "item"><a href = "#chapIII_III">III.</a></td> +<td><p>THE FIASCO OF FREE LOVE</p></td> +<td class = "number">141</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class = "item"><a href = "#chapIII_IV">IV.</a></td> +<td><p>POLYGAMY AT THE POLITE DINNER-TABLE</p></td> +<td class = "number">146</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class = "item"><a href = "#chapIII_V">V.</a></td> +<td><p>IS LEGALISED POLYANDRY THE SOLUTION?</p></td> +<td class = "number">159</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class = "item"><a href = "#chapIII_VI">VI.</a></td> +<td><p>A WORD FOR ‘DUOGAMY’</p></td> +<td class = "number">161</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class = "item"><a href = "#chapIII_VII">VII.</a></td> +<td><p>THE ADVANTAGES OF THE PRELIMINARY CANTER</p></td> +<td class = "number">171</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class = "part" colspan = "3"> +<a href = "#part_IV">PART IV</a><br> +<span class = "smaller">CHILDREN—THE <i>CUL-DE-SAC</i> OF ALL +REFORMS</span> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class = "item"><a href = "#chapIV_I">I.</a></td> +<td><p>TO BEGET OR NOT TO BEGET—THE QUESTION OF THE DAY</p></td> +<td class = "number">177</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class = "item"><a href = "#chapIV_II">II.</a></td> +<td><p>THE PROS AND CONS OF THE LIMITED FAMILY</p></td> +<td class = "number">184</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class = "item"><a href = "#chapIV_III">III.</a></td> +<td><p>PARENTHOOD: THE HIGHEST DESTINY</p></td> +<td class = "number">193</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td class = "part" colspan = "3"> +<a href = "#part_V">PART V</a><br> +<span class = "smaller">HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED</span> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class = "item"><a href = "#chapV_I">I.</a></td> +<td><p>A FEW SUGGESTIONS FOR REFORM</p></td> +<td class = "number">203</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td class = "item"><a href = "#chapV_II">II.</a></td> +<td><p>SOME PRACTICAL ADVICE TO HUSBANDS AND WIVES</p></td> +<td class = "number">209</td> +</tr> +</table> + + +<span class = "pagenum">[1]</span> + +<div class = "dedic"> + +<p class = "center"> +<a name = "dedic" id = "dedic"> </a><br> +<span class = "smallest">TO</span><br> +C. STANLEY CHURTON<br> +<span class = "smallest">THE BEST FATHER IN THE WORLD<br> +WITH DEEP GRATITUDE<br> +FOR A LIFETIME OF LOVING-KINDNESS</span></p> + +</div> + +<div class = "maintext"> + +<div class = "page"> +<span class = "pagenum">[2]</span> + +<h3><a name = "part_I" id = "part_I"> +PART I</a><br> +<span class = "subhead">SIGNS OF UNREST</span></h3> + +<p>‘The Subject of Marriage is kept too much in the dark<ins class = +"correction" title = ". missing">. </ins><br> +Air it! Air it!’ +<span class = "author">—George Meredith.</span></p> + +</div> + + +<span class = "pagenum">3</span> +<h2>MODERN MARRIAGE</h2> + +<h4><a name = "chapI_I" id = "chapI_I">I</a><br> +<span class = "subhead">THE MUTUAL DISSATISFACTION OF<br> +THE SEXES</span></h4> + +<blockquote> +‘The shadow of marriage waits, resolute and awful, at the cross-roads.’ +<span class = "author">—R. L. Stevenson.</span></blockquote> + + +<p><span class = "firstword">Ever</span> since the time, nineteen years +ago, when Mrs Mona Caird attacked the institution of matrimony in the +<i>Westminster Review</i> and led the way for the great discussion on +‘Is Marriage a Failure?’ in the <i>Daily Telegraph</i>—marriage +has been the hardy perennial of newspaper correspondence, and an +unfailing resource to worried sub-editors. When seasons are slack and +silly, the humblest member of the staff has but to turn out a column on +this subject, and whether it be a serious dissertation on ‘The +Perfections of Polygamy’ or a banal discussion on ‘Should husbands have +tea at home?’ it will inevitably +<span class = "pagenum">4</span> +achieve the desired result, and fill the spare columns of the papers +with letters for weeks to come. People are always interested in +matrimony, whether from the objective or subjective point of view, and +that is my excuse for perpetrating yet another book on this well-worn, +but ever fertile topic.</p> + +<p>Marriage indeed seems to be in the air more than ever in this year of +grace; everywhere it is discussed, and very few people seem to have a +good word to say for it. The most superficial observer must have noticed +that there is being gradually built up in the community a growing dread +of the conjugal bond, especially among men; and a condition of +discontent and unrest among married people, particularly women. What is +the matter with this generation that wedlock has come to assume so +distasteful an aspect in their eyes? On every side one hears it vilified +and its very necessity called in question. From the pulpit, the clergy +endeavour to uphold the sanctity of the institution, and unceasingly +exhort their congregations to respect it and abide by its laws. But the +Divorce Court returns make +<span class = "pagenum">5</span> +ominous reading; every family solicitor will tell you his personal +experience goes to prove that happy unions are considerably on the +decrease, and some of the greatest thinkers of our day join in a chorus +of condemnation against latter-day marriage.</p> + +<p>Tolstoy says: ‘The relations between the sexes are searching for a +new form, the old one is falling to pieces.’ Among the manuscript +‘remains’ of Ibsen, that profound student of human nature, the following +noteworthy passage occurs: ‘“Free-born men” is a phrase of rhetoric. +They do not exist, for marriage, the relation between man and wife, has +corrupted the race and impressed the mark of slavery upon all.’ Not long +ago, too, our greatest living novelist, George Meredith, created an +immense sensation by his suggestion that marriage should become a +temporary arrangement, with a minimum lease of, say, ten years.</p> + +<p>That the time has not yet come for any such revolutionary change is +obvious, but if the signs and portents of the last decade or two do not +lie, we may safely assume that the time <i>will</i> come, and that the +present +<span class = "pagenum">6</span> +legal conditions of wedlock will be altered in some way or other.</p> + +<p>Fifteen years ago there was a sudden wave of rebellion against these +conditions, and a renewed interest in the sex question showed itself in +an outbreak of problem novels—a term which later came to be used +as one of reproach. Perhaps the most important of these was Grant +Allen’s <i>The Woman Who Did</i>. I can recall as a schoolgirl the +excitement it aroused and my acute disappointment when it was forcibly +commandeered from me by an irate governess who apparently took no +interest in these enthralling subjects. A host of imitators +followed <i>The Woman Who Did</i>; some of them entirely illiterate, all +of them offering some infallible key to the difficult maze of +marriage.</p> + +<p>Worse still was the reaction that inevitably followed, when realism +was tabooed in fiction, and sickly romance possessed the field. <i>The +Yellow Book</i> and similar strange exotics of the first period withered +and died, and the cult of literature (!) for the British Home was +shortly afterwards in full blast. There followed an avalanche of +insufferably dull and puerile magazines, in which the +<span class = "pagenum">7</span> +word <i>Sex</i> was strictly taboo, and the ideal aimed at was +apparently the extreme opposite to real life. It was odd how suddenly +the sex note—(as I will call it for want of a better +word)—disappeared from the press. Psychology was pronounced ‘off,’ +and plots were the order of the day. Many names well-known at that time +and associated with a <i>flair</i> for delicate delineation of +character, disappeared from the magazine contents bill and the +publisher’s list, whilst facile writers who could turn out mild +detective yarns or tales of adventure and gore were in clover.</p> + +<p>Signs are not wanting that the pendulum of public interest has now +swung back again, and another wave of realism in fiction and inquiry +into the re-adjustment of the conjugal bond is imminent. But the +pendulum will have to swing back and forth a good many times however, +before the relations between the sexes succeed in finding that new form +of which Tolstoy speaks. What the revival I have foretold will +accomplish remains to be seen. What did the last agitation achieve? +Practically nothing; a few women may have been impelled to follow +in the footsteps of Grant Allen’s Herminia +<span class = "pagenum">8</span> +to their undying sorrow, and possibly a good many precocious young +girls, who read the literature of that day, may have given their parents +some anxiety by their revolutionary ideas on the value of the holy +estate. But when that trio so irresistible to the feminine heart came +along—the Ring, the Trousseau, and the House of My Own, to say +nothing of the solid, twelve-stone, prospective husband—which +among these advanced damsels remembered the sermon on the hill-top?</p> + +<p>Yet in the fourteen years that have elapsed since the publication of +<i>The Woman Who Did</i>, there have certainly been some changes. For +one thing, it is still harder apparently to earn a decent living. Times +are bad and money scarce; men are even more reluctant than before to +‘domesticate the recording angel’ by marrying, and a type of woman has +sprung up amongst us who is shy of matrimony and honestly reluctant to +risk its many perils for the sake of its problematical joys. Most +noticeable of all is the growing dissatisfaction of the sexes with each +other. Men do not shun marriage only because of unfavourable financial +conditions, or because +<span class = "pagenum">9</span> +the restrictions of wedlock are any more irksome to them than formerly, +but because they cannot find a wife sufficiently near their ideal. Woman +has progressed to such an extent within the last generation or two: her +outlook has so broadened, her intellect so developed that she has +strayed very far from man’s ideal and, consequently, man hesitates to +marry her. There is something comic about the situation, and at Olympian +dinner-tables I feel sure the gods would laugh at this twentieth-century +conjugal deadlock.</p> + +<p>Another reason why men fall in love so much less than they used to do +is largely due to the decay of the imaginative faculty. As for women, +although they are in the main as anxious to marry as ever, although it +is universally acknowledged that the modern young woman does cultivate +the modern young man unduly, their reasons for doing so are less and +less concerned with the time-honoured motives of love. Marriage brings +independence and a certain social importance; for these reasons women +desire it. H. B. Marriot Watson has put the case neatly thus: +‘Women desire to marry <i>a</i> man; men to +<span class = "pagenum">10</span> +marry <i>the</i> woman.’ Nevertheless women are even now more prone to +fall in love than are men, because they have better preserved this +imaginative faculty, which is possibly also the cause of the +disillusionment and discontent of wives after marriage.</p> + +<p>The upshot of it all is that men and women appear to have become +antagonistic to each other. However much they love the individual of +their fancy, a kind of veiled distrust seems to obtain between the +sexes collectively, but more especially on the part of men—perhaps +because man is more necessary to woman than woman is to man. This +hostility towards woman is particularly noticeable in the pages of the +press. Scarcely a week passes but some journalist of the nobler sex +pours out his scorn for the inferior one of his mother in columns of +masterly abuse on one score or another. Each article is followed by a +passionate correspondence in which ‘Disgusted Dad,’ ‘Hopeless Hubby,’ +‘Browbeaten Brother,’ and the inevitable ‘Cynicus’ express high approval +of the writer, whilst ‘Happy Mother of Seven Girls’ and ‘Lover of the +<span class = "pagenum">11</span> +Sex’ write to demand his instant execution and public disgrace.</p> + +<p>The range of men’s fault-finding is endless; one will assert that +women are mere domestic machines, unfit companions for any intelligent +man, and with no soul above conversation about their servants and +children; another that they are mere blue-stockings striving after an +unattainable intellectuality; a third that they are mere frivolous +dolls without brain or heart, engrossed in the pursuit of pleasure, +a fourth that they are sexless, slangy, misclad masculine +monsters.</p> + +<p>Judged by the assertions of newspaper correspondents, women are at +one and the same time preposterously masculine, contemptibly feminine, +ridiculously intellectual, repulsively athletic, and revoltingly +frivolous. In appearance they are either lank, gaunt, flat-footed +lamp-posts, or else over-dressed, unnaturally-shaped, painted dolls. +Their extravagance exhausts expletive! When they belong to the class of +society generally denoted with a capital S, they invariably smoke, +drink, gamble and swear. They neglect their homes and their children. +They have little principle and less sense, no +<span class = "pagenum">12</span> +morals, no heart and absolutely <i>no</i> sense of humour!</p> + +<p>‘But,’ the observant reader may possibly exclaim, ‘there is nothing +new about this. Woman has ever been man’s favourite grumble-vent, from +the day when the first man got out of his first scrape by blaming the +only available woman!’ True enough, age cannot stale the infinite +variety of women’s misdemeanours, as viewed by men; tradition has +hallowed the subject, custom carries it on; and probably when the last +trump shall sound, the last living man will be found grumbling loudly at +the abominable selfishness of woman for leaving him alone, and the last +dead man to rise will awake cursing because his wife did not call him +sooner!</p> + +<p>But formerly man’s fault-finding was more of the nature of genial +chaff, as when we affectionately laugh at those we love. There was +nearly always a certain good humour about his diatribes, which now is +lacking. In its stead can be noted a bitterness, a distinct animus. +Men apparently take with an ill-grace women’s rebellion against the old +man-made conditions, and they retaliate by falling in love less +frequently, and showing +<span class = "pagenum">13</span> +still more reluctance to enter the arena of matrimony.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, they get there all the same, albeit in a different +spirit. Timorous and trembling, our faint-hearted modern lovers gird on +their new frock-coats and step shrinkingly into the arena where awaits +them—radiant and triumphant—the determined being whose will +has brought them thither. No, not <i>her</i> will, but the mysterious +will of Nature which remains steadfast and of unswerving purpose, +indifferent to our sex-warfare and the progress of our petty loves and +hates. The institution of marriage battered, abused, scarred with +countless thousands of attacks, stained with the sins of centuries still +continues to flourish, for, as Schopenhauer says; ‘<i>It is the future +generation in its entire individual determination which forces itself +into existence through the medium of all this strife and +trouble.</i>’</p> + +<p>The <i>Will-to-Live</i> will always have the last word!</p> + + +<span class = "pagenum">14</span> + +<h4><a name = "chapI_II" id = "chapI_II">II</a><br> +<span class = "subhead">WHY MEN DON’T MARRY</span></h4> + +<blockquote> +‘If you wish the pick of mankind, take a good bachelor and a good +wife.’</blockquote> + +<blockquote> +‘There is probably no other act in a man’s life so hot-headed and +foolish as this of marriage.’ +<span class = "author">—R. L. Stevenson.</span></blockquote> + +<blockquote> +‘Whatever may be said against marriage, it is certainly an experience.’ +<span class = "author">—Oscar Wilde.</span></blockquote> + + +<p><span class = "firstword">‘All</span> the men are getting married and +none of the girls,’ a volatile lady is once reported to have said, and +one understands what she meant to convey. In a newspaper correspondence +on marriage I once noted the following significant passage: ‘<i>But in +these days it is different from what it was when I was a girl. Then +every boy had his sweetheart and every girl her chap. Now it seems to me +the boys don’t want sweethearts and the girls can’t get chaps. For one +youth who means honestly to marry a girl, you will find twenty whose +game is mere flirtation, regardless +<span class = "pagenum">15</span> +of how the girl may be injured. The times are ungallant and they want +mending.</i>’</p> + +<p>This letter is signed ‘A Workman’s Wife,’ but it bears ample evidence +of having been written by a member of the staff, who seemed to consider +sufficient <i>vraisemblance</i> had been given to the signature by the +inclusion of an occasional vulgarism, such as ‘chap.’ But in spite of +being penned to order, the statements expressed appear to be only too +true. The times are ungallant indeed and growing more so every year.</p> + +<p>Not long ago I was at a cheery social gathering where the +non-marrying tendency of modern men was being discussed. Someone put all +the men into a good humour with the reminder that ‘by persistently +remaining single, a man converts himself into a permanent public +temptation,’ and as there were fifteen bachelors present, the +conversation naturally became personal.</p> + +<p>One whom I will call Vivian, gallantly remarked that all the nice +women were married, so he perforce remained single. I happen to +know that he is deeply in love with a married woman. Another, Lucian, +a very handsome and popular man of thirty, +<span class = "pagenum">16</span> +said he fully meant to marry some day, but wanted a few more years’ +freedom first. Dorian gravely asserted that he was waiting for my +daughter (aged eighteen months), but being in his confidence, +I know that his case is similar to Vivian’s. Hadrian’s health +would make his marriage a crime; we are all aware of that fortunately, +so no one asked him. The same discretion was observed with regard to +Julien of whom it is well known that he has formed an ‘unfortunate’ +attachment and has practically not the right to marry. Florian was +jilted years ago, and is shy and distrustful of the sex, which is a +great pity, as he is the kind of man born for fireside and nursery joys, +and would make a wife very happy.</p> + +<p>Of Augustin and Fabian it may be truly said that ‘the more they have +known of the others, the less they will settle to one;’ and indeed I +fear they have spoilt themselves for matrimony, unless there is truth in +the old saying that a reformed rake makes the best husband. Endymion is +altogether too ineligible, his blue eyes and broad shoulders being his +only fortune; he makes plenty of capital out of these adjuncts: they +bring him +<span class = "pagenum">17</span> +in a rich return of feminine favour, but are nevertheless hardly +sufficient to support a wife.</p> + +<p>Claudian is really anxious to marry, but suffers from a fatal +faithlessness and, as he engagingly explains, can’t love a girl long +enough to get the preliminaries settled. One day he is sure to be caught +by some determined and probably very unsuitable woman and led reluctant +to the altar. Galahad won’t marry until he has found ‘the one woman,’ +and I fear he will prove a husband wasted, for poor Galahad already +wears spectacles and a bald spot; his devotion to an unrealisable ideal +bids fair to spoil his life.</p> + +<p>When I put the question to Aurelian, he smiled his evil smile, which +makes him more like an embittered vulture than ever, and remarked that +he was thinking over his offers and hadn’t yet decided which was the +best. As the fact that he has been refused by seven women is well-known, +we really rather admire the persistence of his pose as a lady-killer. He +has even been known to write passionate letters to himself, in an +assumed hand, and drop cleverly-manufactured tears +<span class = "pagenum">18</span> +here and there upon them, to give an air of greater realism to these +amorous masterpieces, which he uses as a proof of his wild stories of +conquest. When dry, the tears look most life-like; of course it is a +dodge that every schoolgirl knows, but I have never known a man have +recourse to it before, and hope never to again!</p> + +<p>Both Cyprian and Valerian gave as the reason for their continued +bachelorhood, the fact that they were too comfortable as bachelors and +had never felt the need of a wife. The latter added that if he could +find just <i>the</i> girl, he would think it over, but as matters stood +he preferred certainty to chance and was taking no risks. Between +ourselves, both these two are very self-satisfied and egotistical +persons, and I don’t think any woman has lost much by their resolve.</p> + +<p>The fourteenth man was Bayard, who belongs to a very exasperating +type of philanderer. Most women of the world have met and been bored by +him to their sorrow. It is his grievous habit to go about professing a +yearning for matrimony of the most ideal kind, and confiding at great +length to safely attached young matrons how he longs to +<span class = "pagenum">19</span> +find a home in one good woman’s heart, and what a great, pure, +passionate, wild love he is capable of. There is something rather +engaging about him, and his pose is naturally very attractive to +unsuspecting spinsters. He is always getting desperately entangled, but +makes a great parade of his poverty when the <i>affaire</i> reaches the +critical point, and wriggles out successfully—generally without +any too unpleasant explanation. If, however, things have gone too far +for this, he can always make good his escape under cover of the +‘I love you too much, darling, to drag you down to poverty’ plea. +How many girls, wounded to the heart’s core, have listened to this hoary +lie when they are more than willing to be poor, if but with him, willing +to economise and save, and forego for his sake.</p> + +<p>Not, of course, that Bayard and his like inspire such devotion; +I mean that the essentials of this particular excuse are given by +very many unmarried men nowadays as the reason of their single state. +Generally speaking, there are two main reasons why men do not marry: 1. +Because they have not yet met a woman they care for sufficiently; +<span class = "pagenum">20</span> +2.—and these constitute a large majority—because they are +too selfish. Of course men don’t spell it that way. Like Bayard, they +say they ‘can’t afford it.’ They think of all the things they would have +to give up—how difficult it is to get enough for their pleasure +now, how impossible it would be then, with the support of a wife and +potential family added; how they would hate having to knock off poker, +find a cheaper tailor, and economise in golf balls. They shudder at the +prospect, and decide in the expressively vulgar parlance of the day that +it’s ‘not good enough.’ The things that are beyond price are weighed +against the things that are bought with money—and found +wanting!</p> + +<p>It would, however, be the last word of foolishness to encourage +improvident marriages, already a source of so much misery, and of course +my remarks do not apply to the genuine poverty of the man who really +cannot afford to wed. For him I have a very real sympathy, since he is +missing the best things of life probably through no fault of his own. +The above strictures are intended solely for the man of moderate means, +<span class = "pagenum">21</span> +who could afford to marry if he loved himself less and some woman more. +Five hundred a year, for instance, is a comfortable income for a +bachelor not in the inner circle of Society. On this sum a middle-class +man can do himself well, provided he has no particularly expensive vices +or hobbies—but it certainly means self-denial when stretched to +provide for a wife and two or three children. It means a small house in +one of the cheaper suburbs, instead of a bachelor flat in town, ’buses +instead of cabs, upper boxes instead of stalls, a fortnight <i>en +famille</i> at Broadstairs instead of a month’s fishing <i>en garçon</i> +in Norway. It means no more suppers at the Savoy, no more week-ends in +Paris, no more ‘running’ over to Monte Carlo; but it <i>can</i> be done, +and done happily, provided a man puts love above luxuries. Almost every +man can afford to marry—the right woman!</p> + +<p>Of course, if a man has still to meet the woman of his fancy, all is +well, but it is the despicable plea of Bayard that so incenses me. If +men would own the truth, it would not be so bad, but, Adam-like, as +usual, they lay the blame on women and say: ‘Girls expect so much +nowadays, it is impossible to make +<span class = "pagenum">22</span> +enough money to satisfy them.’ This is one of the many lies men tell +about women, or perhaps they are under a delusion and really believe the +statement to be true. Let them be undeceived, girls <i>don’t</i> expect +so much; they are perfectly willing to be poor, as I have said before, +if only they care for the man enough. At anyrate, once they have reached +that stage of wanting the real things of life they would sooner have +wifehood and comparative poverty than ease and empty hearts in their +parents’ home. They would sooner, in short, be ‘tired wives than restful +spinsters.’</p> + +<p>Another delusion men spread about women is that they’re too fond of +pleasure to settle down. How often one hears statements such as ‘Juno +Jones wouldn’t make a good wife, she’s out all day playing golf;’ or +‘I couldn’t afford to marry Sappho Smith, she’s too fond of dress +and theatre-going.’ God bless the man! What else have the poor girls to +do? Sappho has a taste for dainty clothes and a love for the theatre; +she fills her empty existence with these things as far as she can; Juno +has nothing in the wide world to do all day long, but she loves the open +air, and so concentrates her magnificent +<span class = "pagenum">23</span> +energies on a game with a stick and ball, because any active part in the +great game of life is denied her. Marry her—if she will have +you—and see what a grand comrade she will make, and what splendid +children she will bear you. Or marry Sappho, and you will find she will +never want any but simple pleasures within your means, as long as you +are kind to her and adore her as she requires to be adored. She will +cheerfully make her own clothes, and find her greatest joy in planning +out your income and adorning your home.</p> + +<p>Everyone can recall having known frivolous and pleasure-loving girls +settle down into admirable wives whose nurseries are models and whose +households are beyond reproach. Doubtless their friends all predicted +disaster when these butterflies were led to the altar. I honestly +believe women only want extravagant pleasures when they are miserable. +It is generally the wretched wives, the unhappy, restless spinsters who +run up bills and fling away money. They feel that life is cheating them +and they must have some compensations.</p> + +<p>But to return to my fifteen bachelors. There only remains Florizel, +whose attitude +<span class = "pagenum">24</span> +towards wedlock is a blend of that of Bayard and Claudian. He is +genuinely eager to marry, ardent, affectionate, anxious to do right, but +lacking in moral courage and egotistical to the point of disease. +I would much like to see him happily wedded, as he then would +doubtless quickly lose that intense self-centredness, but I question if +any attractive woman exists who would be unselfish enough to cope with +him in his present state of egomania. His mind is always inflamed with +some woman or other, and he hovers about on the edge of desperate +<i>amours</i>, anxious to fall head over ears into the sea of love and +cast out an anchor of matrimony to hold him fast where he can swerve no +more. Unfortunately he cannot forget himself enough to take the fatal +plunge. With all his faults there is something very lovable about +Florizel, and I should like to see him knocked into shape, though it +would be a brave and patient woman who would take the task in hand.</p> + +<p>When all the fifteen bachelors had ceased to talk about themselves +and settled down to bridge with the rest of the company, an old lady +who, like myself, preferred to be a +<span class = "pagenum">25</span> +looker-on, came and sat beside me. ‘How they <i>do</i> talk,’ she said! +‘But I can tell you why they don’t marry, in six words, my dear: because +they don’t fall in love! And why don’t they fall in love? Because the +girls are too eager; because the girls meet them all the +way—that’s why! I’ve seven sons, all unmarried, and <i>I</i> +know!’</p> + +<p class = "space"> +<span class = "smallcaps">Note.</span>—It is interesting to note +that Westermarck in his <i>History of Human Marriage</i> quotes a number +of authorities to prove that among many ancient nations marriage was a +religious duty incumbent upon all. Among Mohammedan people generally it +is still considered a duty. Hebrew celibacy was unheard of, and they +have a proverb, ‘He who has no wife is no man.’ In Egypt it is improper +and even disreputable for a man to abstain from marriage when there is +no just impediment. For an adult to die unmarried is regarded as a +deplorable misfortune by the Chinese, and among the Hindus of the +present day a man who remains single is considered to be almost a +useless member of society, and is looked upon as beyond the pale of +nature.</p> + + +<span class = "pagenum">26</span> + +<h4><a name = "chapI_III" id = "chapI_III">III</a><br> +<span class = "subhead">WHY WOMEN DON’T MARRY</span></h4> + +<blockquote> +‘It’s a woman’s business to get married as soon as possible and a man’s +to remain unmarried as long as he can.’ +<span class = "author">—G. Bernard Shaw.</span></blockquote> + +<blockquote> +‘Marriage is of so much use to a woman, opens out to her so much of +life, and puts her in the way of so much more freedom and usefulness, +that whether she marry ill or well, she can hardly miss some benefit.’ +<span class = "author">—R. L. Stevenson.</span></blockquote> + + +<p><span class = "firstword">‘Why</span> women don’t marry? But they +do—whenever they can!’ the intelligent reader will naturally +exclaim. Not ‘whenever they get the chance,’ mark you; no +<i>intelligent</i> reader would make this mistake, though it is a common +enough error among the non-comprehending. Most spinsters over thirty +must have winced at one time or another at the would-be genial rallying +of some elderly man relative: ‘What! you not married yet? Well, well, +I wonder what all the young men are thinking of.’ I write +<i>some man</i> advisedly, for no woman, however +<span class = "pagenum">27</span> +cattishly inclined, however desirous of planting arrows in a rival’s +breast, would utter this peculiarly deadly form of insult, which, +strangely enough, is always intended as a high compliment by the +masculine blunderer. The fact that the unfortunate spinster thus +assailed may have had a dozen offers, and yet, for reasons of her own, +prefer to remain single, seems entirely beyond their range of +comprehension.</p> + +<p>But the main reason why women don’t marry is obviously because men +don’t ask them. Most women will accept when a sufficiently pleasing man +offers them a sufficiently congenial life. If the offers they receive +fall below a certain standard, then they prefer to remain single, +wistfully hoping, no doubt, that the right man may come along before it +is too late. The preservation of the imaginative faculty in women, to +which I have previously alluded, doubtless accounts for many spinsters. +It must also be remembered that the more educated women become, the less +likely they are to marry for marrying’s sake as their grandmothers +did.</p> + +<p>Then there are a few women, quite a +<span class = "pagenum">28</span> +small section, who, unless they can realise their ideal in its entirety, +will not be content with second best. By an irony of fate, it happens +that these are often the noblest of their sex. Yet another small section +remain single from an honest dislike of marriage and its duties. It is +perhaps not too severe to say that a woman who has absolutely no +vocation for wifehood and motherhood must be a degenerate, and so +lacking in the best feminine instincts as to deserve the reproach of +being ‘sexless.’ This type is apparently increasing! I shall deal +with it further in Part IV.</p> + +<p>Then there are those—I should not like to make a guess at their +number—who will marry <i>any</i> man, however undesirable and +uncongenial, rather than be left ‘withering on the stalk.’ It is an +acutely humiliating fact that there exists no man too ugly, too foolish, +too brutal, too conceited and too vile to find a wife. <i>Any</i> man +can find <i>some</i> woman to wed him. In this connection, one recalls +the famous cook, who, when condoled with on the defection of a lover, +replied: ‘It don’t matter; thank God I can love any man!’</p> + +<span class = "pagenum">29</span> +<p>One cannot help being amused by the serious articles on this subject +in feminine journals. We are gravely told that women don’t marry +nowadays because they price their liberty too high, because those who +have money prefer to be independent and enjoy life, and those who have +none prefer bravely wringing a living from the world to being a man’s +slave, a mere drudge, entirely engrossed in housekeeping, etc., +etc.; and so on—pages of it! All this may possibly be true of a +very small portion of the community, but the uncontrovertible fact +remains that the principal reason for woman’s spinsterhood is man’s +indifference.</p> + +<p>I have every sympathy with the women who wish to postpone taking up +the heavy responsibilities of matrimony till they have had what in the +opposite sex is termed ‘a fling,’ that is until they have enjoyed a +period of freedom wherein to study, to travel, to enjoy their youth +fully, to meet many men, to look life in the eyes and learn something of +its meaning. But there comes a period in the life of almost every +woman—except the aforesaid degenerate—when she feels it is +time to ‘put away childish things,’ +<span class = "pagenum">30</span> +and into her heart there steals a longing for the real things of +life—the things that matter, the things that last—wedded +love and little children, and that priceless possession, a home of +one’s own.</p> + +<p>It is the fashion nowadays to discredit the home, and it has been +jestingly alluded to by Mr Bernard Shaw as ‘the girl’s prison and the +woman’s workhouse;’ but what a wonderful sanctuary it really +is!—and exactly how much it means to a woman, only those who have +felt the need of it can tell. In our youth, home is the place where +hampers come from, where string and stamps and magazines grow on the +premises, a place generally where love is, but nevertheless +essentially a place we take for granted and for which we never dream of +being grateful. Later on it is sometimes associated with irksome duties; +to some it even becomes a place to get away from; but when we have lost +it, how we long for it! How reverently we think of each room and the +things that happened there; how we yearn in thought over the old garden +and dream about the beloved trees. No matter how mean a home it may have +been, every bit of +<span class = "pagenum">31</span> +it is sacred and dear—from the box-room, where on wet days we +played at robbers, to the toolshed, where on fine days we played at +everything under the sun. To this day if I chance on a badly-cooked +potato it almost brings tears to my eyes, not because of its badness, +but because it recalls the potatoes that three small children used to +cook with gladness and eat with silent awe, in the ashes of a bonfire, +in an old garden, long, long ago—whilst the smell of a bonfire +itself makes me feel seven years old again!</p> + +<p>But whether she has a home with her parents or not, every normal +woman longs for a home of her own, and a girl who resents even arranging +the flowers on her mother’s dinner-table will after marriage cheerfully +do quite distasteful housework in the place she calls her own.</p> + +<p>This passionate love of home is one of the most marked feminine +characteristics; I don’t mean love of being <i>at</i> home, as +modern women’s tastes frequently lie elsewhere, but love of the place +itself and the desire to possess it. A great number of women marry +solely to obtain this coveted possession. As for those who don’t, the +advertisement +<span class = "pagenum">32</span> +columns of the <i>Church Times</i>, the <i>Christian World</i>, and +other papers tell a pitiful story of their need. Ladies ‘by birth’ +(pathetic and foolish little phrase!) are willing to do almost anything +in return for just a modest corner, a very subordinate place even +in someone else’s home. They will be housekeepers, servants, companions, +secretaries, helps for ‘a small salary and a home,’ and sometimes +for no salary at all. They will pack, sew, mend, teach, supervise; they +offer their knowledge of every kind, such as it is, their music, their +languages, their health and strength, their subservience and all their +virtues, real or acquired—all in return for a little food and +fire, and the sheltering of four walls, which constitute their extreme +need, their utmost desire—a home! Beautiful women, gifted and good +women, sell themselves daily just to gain a home. Even Hedda Gabler, +most degenerate of modern heroines, who shot herself rather than be a +mother, sold herself in a loveless marriage only for a home. And yet +constantly we read a list of trivial and fantastic reasons why women +don’t marry!</p> + +<p>A girl-bachelor who was compelled to +<span class = "pagenum">33</span> +spend most of her time in that uncomfortable place technically known as +‘one’s boxes,’ once told me that her greatest desire was a spot just big +enough for a wardrobe in which to keep her spare clothes and little +possessions. She did without a home, but she longed intensely for that +wardrobe. ‘I shall have to marry Tony soon,’ she said, ‘just for +the convenience of having room for my clothes. I don’t like him, +and I want to wait till someone I do like comes, but if ever I take him, +it will be for wardrobe room, you just see.’ I must add that +‘someone’ <i>did</i> come, and she now possesses several wardrobes and +three bouncing babies, and Tony cuts her when he meets her in the +Park!</p> + +<p>This home passion is even more noticeable in that class of society +usually referred to as the lower. I have occasionally employed a +poor woman who has been in service as cook since her husband died +nineteen years ago. All that time, she has ‘kept on the home,’ +<i>i.e.</i> a single room which contains her furniture. She has scarcely +ever had to use the room, except for an odd day or two, and has had to +spend much of her scanty leisure in cleaning it. For nineteen years she +has +<span class = "pagenum">34</span> +paid three-and-six a week for the room sooner than sell her furniture. +The £172 thus expended would have paid for the furniture over and over +again. The woman quite realises the absurdity of it, but ‘I simply +couldn’t part with the ’ome,’ is her explanation.</p> + +<p>Yet another instance. Once when staying in seaside lodgings, +I had the misfortune to break a homely vessel of thick blue glass +which had evidently begun life as a fancy jam jar, but had been +relegated, for some reason obscure to me, to the proud position of +mantel ‘ornament,’ if that be the term. To my surprise the worthy +landlady wept bitterly over the pieces, and when I spoke of gorgeous +objects wherewith to replace her treasure, explained snappishly: +‘Nothing won’t make it good to me! Why, that there blue vorse was the +beginning of the ’ome!’</p> + +<p>I must ask pardon for this digression and return to the subject in +hand. The most depressing aspect of the question is that even if every +man over twenty-five were married there would be still an enormous +number of women left husbandless. This is really very +<span class = "pagenum">35</span> +serious, and is a condition that gives rise to many evils. To make up +for it as far as possible, every man of sound health and in receipt of +sufficient income ought to marry. If it is merely ‘not good’ for man to +be alone, then it is very bad indeed for women! Every woman should have +a man companion, a man to live with—if only to take the +tickets, carry the bags and get up in the night to see what that noise +is. Since society as at present constituted does not countenance men and +women living together for companionship, then clearly every woman ought +to have a husband!</p> + +<p>Mr Bernard Shaw has written: ‘Give women the vote and in five years +there will be a crushing tax on bachelors.’ So there should be, subject +to certain qualifications of age and income; this is one of the many +matters in which we should take a lesson from the Japanese where all +bachelors over a certain age are taxed; in France too, a bill, to +this effect, is being discussed. At the time of writing, women are full +of anticipation of being speedily enfranchised, and there is a good deal +of talk about what use they will make of the vote. I regret to say +that +<span class = "pagenum">36</span> +although there have been some utterly idiotic threats to abolish that +boon to wives—the man’s club—yet so far, with one exception, +nothing has appeared in print as to the advisability of taxing +bachelors. The exception is a very interesting anonymous novel called +<i>Star of the Morning</i>, which strongly advocates such a tax, among +several other thoughtful suggestions for political reform.</p> + +<p>It is obviously only just that the man who is doing nothing for the +State in the way of rearing a family should be taxed to relieve the man +who is. We hear so much about the falling birth-rate, and the duty of +every married couple to have a family, yet everything is done to +discourage those who do. The professional man slaving to earn, say, +£1000 a year, and bring up three or four children for the State, is +taxed exactly as much as the bachelor in receipt of the same income who +does nothing at all for the State, and can even avoid the other taxes by +being a lodger, if he choose.</p> + +<p>But even if we eventually get reasonable legislation, which would +offer rewards instead of additional burdens to those who +<span class = "pagenum">37</span> +do their share in keeping up the birth-rate; even if a bachelor over +twenty-five became as rare an object in these islands as an old maid in +a Mohammedan country, still there would be this enormous superfluity of +spinsters. Why is it? Why should Great Britain be regarded as a paradise +of old maids? Why should we have more spinsters than other countries? Is +it because our colonies swallow up so many men? Then why can’t they +swallow up an equal number of women? I should like this most +important matter to be taken up by the State and an Institution for +Encouraging Marriage started under State auspices. One of the duties of +this institution would be to induce numbers of suitable women to +emigrate, so as to preserve the proper balance of the sexes in the home +country, and that every colonist might have a chance to get a wife. +I heard the other day of a very ordinary colonial girl who had +eleven men all wanting to marry her at once. Eleven men! And yet there +are scores of charming English girls who grow old and soured without +having had a single offer of marriage.</p> + +<span class = "pagenum">38</span> +<p>Another duty of the Institution for Encouraging Marriage would be to +try and reach and bring together the thousands of lonely middle-class +men and women in large towns, who are engaged at work all day and have +no means of meeting members of the opposite sex. I have just been +reading Francis Gribble’s very interesting novel, <i>The Pillar of +Cloud</i>, in which he describes the existence of half a dozen girls in +‘Stonor House’ one of those dreary barracks for homeless females engaged +during the day. The frantic desire of these girls to meet men of their +own class is painfully true, and this desire is not so much the outcome +of young women’s natural tendency to cultivate young men, but because +all such men to them are possible husbands, and marriage is the only way +out from Stonor House and the joyless existence there.</p> + +<p>In <i>The Pathway of the Pioneer</i> published a few years ago, Dolf +Wyllarde breaks similar ground, but her young women are more morbid and +less frankly anxious to meet men with a view to matrimony. Both books, +however, give one a good idea of the cheerless, +<span class = "pagenum">39</span> +unnatural lives led by young middle-class women, whose relatives, if +any, are far away, and who work for their living in large +towns—condemned almost inevitably to celibacy by these +unfavourable social conditions.</p> + +<p>That large numbers of daintily-bred women should be condemned to such +an existence is the strongest possible argument in favour of the +establishment of two French institutions, viz., strictly limited +families and the system of <i>dots</i>. Of late years, the former has +been largely adopted in England, and until the latter custom also +becomes the rule, the Institution for Encouraging Matrimony could take +the matter in hand. Two or three unusually sensible philanthropists have +already given their attention to this important subject, but any +movement of this nature at once assumes too much the aspect of a +matrimonial agency to be approved by the class for whose welfare it is +destined. However, the I.F.E.M. would have to deal with this +obstacle and conceal its real intentions under another name. I am +sure if its object were sufficiently wrapped-up that refined men and +women +<span class = "pagenum">40</span> +could take advantage of it without loss of self-respect—the +response to such an institution by both sexes would be enormous. +A club, ostensibly for promoting social intercourse, might be the +solution, and subscription dances, concerts, organised excursions would +not be difficult to arrange, and would make a source of brightness and +interest in many drab lives. Country branches could be started if the +thing proved a success.</p> + +<p>One constantly sees in the newspapers proof of the fact that there +are a very large number of middle-class young men able and anxious to +marry, who lack feminine acquaintances of their own social standing from +whom to make a choice. Unfortunate <i>mésalliances</i> are often the +result, and it seems to me a sad and wasteful thing that these +uxoriously-inclined men cannot be brought into contact with some of the +thousands of young women whose lives are passed in uncongenial toil and +who are eating out their hearts in their anxiety for a home and a +husband of their own. Until the I.F.E.M. becomes fact, here is +splendid work ready to hand for a philanthropist +<span class = "pagenum">41</span> +of infinite tact, and large, sympathetic heart. What a chance to add to +the sum of human joy! What a rich reward for the expenditure of but a +little time and money!</p> + + +<span class = "pagenum">42</span> + +<h4><a name = "chapI_IV" id = "chapI_IV">IV</a><br> +<span class = "subhead">THE TRAGEDY OF THE UNDESIRED</span></h4> + +<div class = "verse"> +<p>‘So man and woman will keep their trust,</p> +<p> Till the very Springs of the Sea run dust.</p> + +<p class = "stanza"> +‘Yea, each with the other will lose and win,</p> +<p> For the Strife of Love’s the abysmal Strife,</p> +<p> And the Word of Love is the Word of Life.</p> + +<p class = "stanza"> +‘And they that go with the Word unsaid,</p> +<p> Though they seem of the living, are damned and dead.’</p> + +<p class = "right"> +<span class = "author">—W. E. Henley.</span></p> +</div> + + +<p><span class = "firstword">This</span> is a tragedy of which few men +know the existence and certainly no man in these woman-ridden isles can +ever have experienced. Men always treat with derision the woman anxious +for matrimony, and gibe equally at the spinster who fails to attain it. +Heaven alone knows why, since by men’s laws and traditions the married +state has been made to mean everything desirable for a woman, and the +unmarried condition everything undesirable. ‘People think women who do +not want to marry unfeminine; people think women who do want to marry +<span class = "pagenum">43</span> +immodest; people combine both opinions by regarding it as unfeminine for +women not to look longingly forward to wifehood as the hope and purpose +of their lives, and ridiculing and <ins class = "correction" title = +"archaic spelling unchanged (elsewhere ‘condemn’)">contemning</ins> any +individual woman of their acquaintance whom they suspect of entertaining +such a longing. They must wish and not wish; they must not give, and +certainly must not withhold, encouragement—and so it goes on, each +precept cancelling the last, and most of them negative.’<ins class = +"correction" title = "footnote tag missing"><a class = "tag" name = +"tag1" id = "tag1" href = "#note1">1</a></ins></p> + +<p>Both Mr Bernard Shaw and Mr George Moore have stated in print that +women frequently propose to men, and several men have confided in me +details of the proposals they have received from forward fair ones. +I believe it is one of the tenets of advanced women that the sex +that bears the child has a right to choose the husband. Although +unpleasantly revolutionary this seems eminently sane. That the right to +choose a mate should be open to all adults, instead of being the sole +privilege of the most selfish and least observant sex, will possibly be +acknowledged in the future, when the woman question shall be set at rest +for ever.</p> + +<span class = "pagenum">44</span> +<p>In those far-off days there will, let us hope, be no more tragedy of +the undesired. It seems almost indelicate to apply this phrase to the +noble army of British spinsters, for the most part dignified, worthy +women, comprising ratepayers, householders, philanthropists, +mothers-in-all-but-fact—working parochially, among the poor, in +hospitals, schools, homes, offices, and studios—on public bodies, +on the staff of newspapers—generally cheerful and helpful, +sometimes clever, often charming, occasionally a little narrow perhaps, +but on the whole upholding the best traditions of their sex, and of +course <i>never</i> admitting that they would like to have married. Deep +in their own hearts, however, almost all of them must feel the sadness +of their unfulfilment, comfort themselves how they may with other +interests. Those that have engrossing occupations should be thankful, +for the woman whose whole heart is set on finding a husband and who +fails to attain this object generally becomes fretful, bitter, +disappointed and useless in every way. But women whose minds are +sufficiently broad to hold other ideals than the matrimonial one find +other work to do, and do it +<span class = "pagenum">45</span> +capably and faithfully. Loving and sympathetic women are always wanted. +Marriage is not essential to such a woman’s life, though it may be to +the highest development of her happiness.</p> + +<p>Again, the large number of women who have had chances of marrying can +comfort themselves that they chose to be single for their ideal’s +sake—or for whatever the reason was. Larger still is the number of +those possessing the non-marrying temperament of which Bernard Shaw has +written: ‘Barren—the Life-Force passes it by.’ This rarely +troubles them; they have a host of minor pleasures and interests which +suffice; no storms of feeling, no pangs of stifled mother-longing ruffle +the placid surface of their lives. The real tragedy of the undesired +does not touch either of these classes; it is reserved in all its +poignancy for those who belong to the type of the <i>grande +amoureuse</i>, whom lack of opportunity generally, lack of +attractiveness sometimes, has prevented from fulfilling the deepest need +of their nature.</p> + +<p>I once met at a hotel on the Riviera an elderly spinster who was +always incredibly depressed. However bravely shone the sun, +<span class = "pagenum">46</span> +however fair seemed the world in that fairest spot, nothing had the +power to cheer her. I tried once to get her to join in an excursion +which a party of us were going to make on donkey-back to a neighbouring +village in the hills, but she refused. Another time I invited her to +accompany me to the rooms at Monte Carlo, but she again refused, and +after several well-meant efforts on my part to cheer her had led to the +same result, the poor soul told me in hesitating words that she shunned +gay places and lively gatherings. ‘They always make me discontented and +remind me of what I might have had; it brings home to me the—what +shall I call it?—the <i>tragedy of the might-have-been</i>.’ I +understood what she meant, and no further words on the subject passed +between us, much to my relief, as confidences of this nature are very +painful to both sides. My readers will probably despise this poor lady +as morbid, selfish and unbalanced. Possibly they are right, but the +sadness of an empty heart, a lonely life, was the cause of her +warped nature. Fortunately hers is an extreme case; the majority of +spinsters I imagine can take a delight in seeing girls +<span class = "pagenum">47</span> +happy, and are generally deeply interested in the love affairs of +others. I recall a beautiful line of Fiona Macleod’s to the effect +that ‘a secret vision in the soul will hallow life.’ This will +suffice to keep many spinsters happy—the memory of some love and +tenderness, a romance of some kind to sweeten life; women +need it.</p> + +<p>To give another instance: a woman once asked me why men fell in love. +‘I wonder if you can tell me what it is about women that makes men +propose to them,’ she said. ‘I’ve known numbers of plain women married +and numbers of penniless ones, and some quite horrid ones without a +single quality likely to make a man happy, yet there must have been +<i>something</i> about them that attracted—some reason +for it.’</p> + +<p>She went on to tell me in such a pathetic way how she longed to have +a home and a ‘nice, kind man,’ to care for her, and yet no man had ever +asked her; no man had ever desired her or looked on her with love; she +had never known the clasp of a man’s passionate arms, nor the ecstasy of +a lover’s kiss. It seemed very strange to me, +<span class = "pagenum">48</span> +strangely painful and horribly humiliating. I could scarcely bear +to look at her while she told me these things.</p> + +<p>‘I would make a man so happy,’ she said, and her mournful dark eyes +filled with tears; she had rather fine eyes, and was quite a +nice-looking woman with a most sweet and gentle manner. ‘I would be +so good to him,’ she went on; ‘I’d simply live for him. I try to +put it out of my mind, but as I grow older, and it’s more hopeless, +I think of it more and more and sometimes I feel I shall go mad +with the misery of it. The future is so utterly grey and it’s all so +unjust. I’m so fitted for love, and now my life’s going and I’ve had +nothing, <i>nothing</i>!’</p> + +<p>She wept bitterly and I wept too in sympathy with her. Curiously +enough, this woman was not only attractive, as I have said, and anxious +to please, and thoroughly feminine, but she had had ample opportunities +of meeting men. I suppose she lacked what the Scotch peasant-woman +called the ‘<i>come hither in the ’ee</i>’—some subtle +sex-magnetism which had been possessed by those ‘plain, penniless, and +horrid women’ whom she talked about. Or perhaps it was that the +<span class = "pagenum">49</span> +‘will to live’ was absent and therefore no mate came to the woman.</p> + +<p>There are thousands of women who feel the same, though in most cases +they would scorn to own it. We hear a good deal of man’s right to live; +what about woman’s right to love? Women are so constituted that the need +for loving and being loved is the strongest factor of their being, the +essential of their existence. All over the country there are lonely +women of every class, leisured and working women, pretty and plain, good +and bad, who are hungering and thirsting for love, for a man to take +care of them, for the right to wifehood and the thrice blessed right to +motherhood. In the Press the parrot cry of men echoes ceaselessly: +‘Women shouldn’t meddle in politics; women shouldn’t do this or +that—let them mind their homes and their children.’ But the +restless women who do these things have generally no homes or children +to mind; what is the use of preaching the sacredness of motherhood when +you will not allow them to be mothers? To what end prate of the duties +of wifehood when you do not ask them to be wives?</p> + +<span class = "pagenum">50</span> +<p>It is a well-known physiological fact that numbers of women become +insane in middle life who would not have done so if they had enjoyed the +ordinary duties, pleasures and preoccupations of matrimony—if +their women’s natures had not been starved by an unnatural celibacy. +This is not a suitable subject to go into here, but I recommend it to +the attention of my more thoughtful readers and those who concern +themselves with the amelioration of the wretched social conditions of +our glorious twentieth-century civilisation.</p> + +<p>Hardest of all is the case of the woman who longs not merely for +wifehood and ‘a kind man,’ but more especially for motherhood, the +bitter-sweet crown of the sex that celibate priests preach ceaselessly +as woman’s first duty and highest good, but which thousands of women in +this country are debarred from fulfilling! Surely no bitterness must be +so poignant as the bitterness of the woman who longs for +motherhood—ceaselessly in her ears the Life Force is calling, and +deep in her heart the dream children are stirring, crying, ‘Give us +life! give us life!’ becoming more importunate every +<span class = "pagenum">51</span> +year, as each year finds the divine possibilities unrealised.</p> + +<p>I often think how everything combines to torment a generous-hearted, +full-blooded, mother-woman whose nature is starved thus. She has, of +course, to suppress all emotion on the subject, to hold her head high, +and endure with a smile the ‘experienced’ airs of girls, much younger +than herself, who happen to wear that magical golden ring that changes +all life for a woman; to pretend generally that she has no wish to +marry, never had, and could have if she chose, to laugh at this page if +she should happen to read it, and call the writer a morbid +idiot—in short, she always has to act a part before a world which +professes to find exquisitely humorous the fact of a woman being cheated +out of the birthright of her sex. Every paper and book she picks up +nowadays contains some reference to the glories of motherhood, the joys +of love. Music, pictures, novels and plays, all speak of sex fulfilled +and triumphant, not starved and denied like hers. The same principle is +everywhere in Nature—the sky, the sea, the flowers, the green +trees, the sound of summer rain—all beautiful sights +<span class = "pagenum">52</span> +and sounds have the same meaning, the same burden, the same sharp sting +for her. If she is inclined to be morbid, every child’s face seen in the +street turns the knife in the wound; every sweet baby’s cooing is +another pang. ‘Not for me—not for me!’ must be the perpetual +refrain in her mind. Her arms are empty, her heart is cold; she belongs +to the vast, sad army of the undesired.</p> + +<p><i>Do you wonder the madhouses are full of single women?</i></p> + +<p class = "space"> +<span class = "smallcaps">Note.</span>—A clever and delightful +friend of mine, a spinster by choice, takes exception to my views on the +single estate. I should be deeply grieved if any words of mine were +to cause pain to other women. I have said before that some of the +best women are spinsters, which is sad to a believer in marriage like +myself. Two of the sweetest and noblest women I know are unmarried; one +of them especially seems absolutely without a thought of self, and has +worked hard for others all her life, giving her powers of brain and body +to their utmost limit, and the treasures of her beautiful heart +generously +<span class = "pagenum">53</span> +and without stint. I beg my readers to note that I have tried to +differentiate between those spinsters who do not want to marry and those +who do; between the rich spinster who can command all the amenities of +life, and the poor one compelled to a relentless and unceasing round of +uncongenial toil. Still more do I wish to distinguish between the placid +contented woman who can adapt herself to circumstances and find a quiet +sort of happiness in any life—and the less well-balanced, more +passionate natures, with deeper desires and an imperious need of loving. +It is this need of loving stifled, crushed and fought against that +awakens my profound compassion—a compassion which my friend +informs me is wasted and misplaced. My readers must judge.</p> + + +<!-- 54 --> + +<div class = "page"> + +<span class = "pagenum">55</span> + +<h3><a name = "part_II" id = "part_II"> +PART II</a><br> +<span class = "subhead">CAUSES OF FAILURE</span></h3> + +<p>‘For Marriage is like Life in this, that it is a field of battle, not +a bed of roses.’ +<span class = "author">—R. L. Stevenson.</span></p> + +<p>‘Marriage is to me apostasy, profanation of the sanctuary of my soul, +violation of my manhood, sale of my birthright, shameful surrender, +ignominious capitulation, acceptance of defeat.’—<i>Man and +Superman.</i></p> + +<p>‘A wise man should avoid married life, as though it were a burning +pit of live coals.’—<i>Dhammika Sutta.</i></p> + +</div> + + +<!-- 56 --> +<span class = "pagenum">57</span> + +<h4><a name = "chapII_I" id = "chapII_I">I</a><br> +<span class = "subhead">THE VARIOUS KINDS OF MARRIAGE</span></h4> + +<blockquote> +‘Marriage is the great mistake that wipes out the smaller stupidities of +Love.’ +<span class = "author">—Schopenhauer.</span></blockquote> + + +<p><span class = "firstword">In</span> one of his essays Stevenson says: +‘I am so often filled with wonder that so many marriages are passable +successes, and so few come to open failure, the more so as I fail to +understand the principle on which people regulate their choice.’</p> + +<p>Out of the chaos which envelops this ‘principle’ four special motives +seem to stand out, and we can therefore roughly divide the marriages +that take place into five sections thus—</p> + +<div class = "inset"> +<p>1. The Marriage of Passion.</p> +<p>2. The Marriage of Convenience.</p> +<p>3. Marriage for a Purpose.</p> +<p>4. Haphazard Marriage.</p> +<p>5. The Marriage of Affection.</p> +</div> + +<p class = "space"> +<i>The Marriage of Passion.</i>—One of Mr +<span class = "pagenum">58</span> +Somerset Maugham’s characters in <i>The Merry-Go-Round</i> says: ‘I’m +convinced that marriage is the most terrible thing in the world, unless +passion makes it absolutely inevitable.’ Although a profound admirer of +Mr Maugham’s work, here I find myself entirely at variance with him. +Most of the mad, unreasonable matches are those which ‘passion makes +inevitable.’ Theoretically this is one of the most promising types of +marriage—in practice it proves the most fatally unhappy of all. +‘They’re madly in love with each other, it’s an ideal match’ is a +comment one often hears expressed with much satisfaction, but it is a +painful fact that these desperate loves lead very frequently to disaster +and divorce. Most of the miserable married couples personally known to +me were ‘madly in love’ with each other at the start.</p> + +<p>Is it to be wondered at when one considers the matter? Nature, who +seldom makes a mistake where primitive mankind is concerned is by no +means infallible when dealing with the artificial conditions of our +Western civilisation. In the East where greater sex licence is allowed, +it seems quite safe to trust +<span class = "pagenum">59</span> +Nature and follow the instincts she implants. Not so in our hemisphere. +The young man and maid who fall under passion’s thrall are temporarily +blind and mad; their judgment is obscured, their reasoning powers +non-existent, nothing in the world seems of the slightest importance +except the overwhelming necessity <i>to give</i> themselves—<i>to +possess</i> the beloved, the being who has fired their blood.</p> + +<p>If the Fates are cruel, these two are permitted to rush into +matrimony. Nature has worked her will and pays no more heed. She is +well-satisfied: the children born of these unions of utter madness are +generally the finest and strongest, and what else does Nature care +about? But for the young couple? . . . Gradually the +roseate clouds lift, the intoxicating fumes are wafted away—the +rapture subsides, and each awakes from the effects of the most potent +drug in the universe to find a very ordinary young person at their +side—and around them a chain which men name ‘Forever!’</p> + +<p>Unhappy indeed are these two if, when they stand facing each other +over passion’s grave, there proves to be no link at all +<span class = "pagenum">60</span> +between them except the memory of the madness that has died. Fortunately +this is by no means always the case, but <ins class = "correction" title += "punctuation unchanged: may need comma after ‘is’">when it is</ins> a +very unhappy married life must inevitably follow. Schopenhauer gives as +the reason for such matches proving unhappy the fact that their +participants look after ‘the welfare of the future generation at the +expense of the present,’ and quotes the Spanish proverb, ‘He who marries +for love must live in grief.’ From the point of view of the individual’s +interest, and not that of the future generation, it certainly seems a +mistake to wed the object of intense desire unless there is also +spiritual harmony, community of tastes and interests, and many other +points of union in common. But under the influence of suppressed passion +people lose their clearness of mental vision and are therefore more or +less incapable of judging.</p> + +<p>Let there be passion in marriage by all means—so far I entirely +agree with Mr Maugham—but let it be merely the outer covering of +love—a garment of flame the embrace of which is ecstasy indeed, +but which, when it has burnt itself away, still leaves love a solid form +of joy and beauty, erect beneath +<span class = "pagenum">61</span> +its ashes. ‘Real friendship,<ins class = "correction" title = "’ missing">. +</ins>founded on harmony of sentiment, does not exist until +the instinct of sex has been extinguished.<a class = "tag" name = "tag2" +id = "tag2" href = "#note2">2</a></p> + +<p class = "space"> +<i>Marriages of Convenience</i> are of two kinds, the wholly sordid, +when money, social position, or some personal aggrandisement has been +the motive on one or both sides, without any basis of affection; and the +partially-sordid, when these reasons are modified by some existing +affection or liking. In this category come the people who marry +principally in the interests of their business or profession, such as +the barrister who weds the solicitor’s daughter, or the young doctor who +marries into the old doctor’s family. In this connection one recalls the +father who advised his sons not to marry for money, but to love where +money was. No doubt the possession of a little money or ‘influence’ is +an added attraction to a maiden’s charm in the eyes of the go-ahead +young man of to-day; and considering how hard it appears to be to earn a +living nowadays one cannot altogether blame them—distressing as it +seems from the sentimental +<span class = "pagenum">62</span> +point of view. I don’t believe, however, that there are so many +wholly sordid marriages outside the confines of the set generally +prefixed as ‘smart.’ People who are not members of this glittering +circle are already sufficiently shy of matrimony nowadays, and are +afraid of the enormous additional handicap such a match would carry. Of +course these unions are almost inevitably miserable failures, and one +wonders what else the victims could have expected.</p> + +<p class = "space"> +We now come to the third division, <i>Marriage for a Purpose</i>. These +matches are distantly allied with the partially-sordid, but there is +nothing sordid about them, as they are frequently undertaken from the +highest motives. In this class are the widowers who wed for the sake of +their children, the spinsters whose motive is their desire for +motherhood, the men and women who marry to possess a home, or for the +sake of companionship. All these reasons are justifiable enough, and +people who embark on matrimony with a set purpose generally take it very +seriously, and determine to +<span class = "pagenum">63</span> +make a success of it. Such marriages often prove extremely happy, +perhaps for the very reason that so little is asked. The spirit of +contentment is an excellent influence in married life, since love is +often killed by its own excessive demands, as I shall endeavour to show +later.</p> + +<p class = "space"> +<i>Haphazard Marriages</i> seem to me the best way to describe those +unions into which men drift without any special reason, sometimes almost +against their own wish. Nature does not care how the young people come +together as long as they do come, and sometimes a man finds himself +drifting into matrimony almost before he is aware. I write a ‘man’ +advisedly as women never <i>drift</i> into wifehood. In these cases it +is generally their set and deliberate purpose that has steered the man +into the conjugal harbour unknown to him. He has merely followed the +line of least resistance and found to his surprise that it leads to the +altar. Mr Bernard Shaw has given a very amusing, and, in spite of +itself, convincing, picture of this manœuvring in <i>Man and +Superman</i>, where he also expresses his conviction +<span class = "pagenum">64</span> +that ‘men, to protect themselves . . . have set up a feeble, +romantic conviction that the initiative in sex business must always come +from the man . . . but the pretence is so shallow, so unreal +that even in the theatre, that last sanctuary of unreality, it imposes +only on the inexperienced. In Shakespeare’s plays the woman always takes +the initiative. In his problem plays and his popular plays alike the +love interest is the interest of seeing the woman hunt the man +down. . . . The pretence that women do not take the +initiative is part of the farce. Why, the whole world is strewn with +snares, traps, gins, and pitfalls for the capture of men by women. It is +assumed that the woman must wait motionless to be wooed. Nay, she often +does wait motionless. That is how the spider waits for the fly. The +spider spins her web. And if the fly, like my hero, shows a strength +that promises to extricate him, how swiftly does she abandon her +pretence of passiveness, and openly fling coil after coil about him +until he is secured for ever!’</p> + +<p class = "space"> +<i>The Marriage of Affection.</i>—‘Do you +<span class = "pagenum">65</span> +know any thoroughly happy couples?’ says one of the characters in +<i>Double Harness</i>.</p> + +<p>‘Very hard to say. Oh, ecstasies aren’t for this world, you +know—not permanent ecstasies. You might as well have permanent +hysterics. And, as you’re aware, there are no marriages in heaven. So +perhaps there’s no heaven in marriages either.’</p> + +<p>These sentiments are of a nature to disgust and irritate the ignorant +girl of twenty by their callous unreality in her eyes, and to delight +the experienced woman of, say, thirty, by their profound truth in +hers—so utterly do one’s ideas about life change in the course of +ten years or so!</p> + +<p>Sixty years ago George Sand wrote: ‘You ask me whether you will be +<ins class = "correction" title = "text reads ‘hapy’">happy</ins> thro’ +love and marriage. You will not, I am fully convinced, be so in +either the one or the other. Love, fidelity, maternity are nevertheless +the most important, the most necessary things in the life of a +woman.’</p> + +<p>To the same effect writes R. L. Stevenson when he says: ‘I suspect +Love is rather too violent a passion to make in all cases a good +domestic character.’ Of course no very young people will believe this, +but it is a +<span class = "pagenum">66</span> +horrid sordid truth that, as a rule, the happiest marriages are those in +which the couple do not love too intensely. I am speaking of solid, +workaday happiness, not of ecstasies and raptures. The excessive claims +made by passionate love and the fevered state of mind it produces are +often the cause of its shipwreck. ‘If I am horrid, darling,’ a girl +once said to her lover, when trying to make up a quarrel she herself had +brought about, ‘it’s only because I love you so intensely.’ ‘Then, for +God’s sake, love me less, and treat me better,’ snapped the outraged +lover, and we can but sympathise with him.</p> + +<p>I have purposely used the word <i>Affection</i> in this division, in +place of one signifying a greater degree of feeling, and I +unhesitatingly state that generally speaking, the most successful +marriages are those which—‘when the first sweet sting of love be +past, the sweet that almost venom is,’ develop into the temperate, +unexacting, peaceful and harmonious unions which come under this +heading. To the ardent youths and maidens—restless seekers after +the elusive joy of life—who will have none of this prosaic and +<span class = "pagenum">67</span> +inglorious counsel, and who are prepared to stake their all on the +belief that the first sweet sting of love is going to last for ever, +I say: Get your roses-and-raptures over some other way; don’t look +for romance in marriage or, unless your case prove the exception to the +rule, you will inevitably make a terrible mistake! . . . +Oh, don’t ask <i>me</i> how it is to be done, but remember what I say, +and don’t marry until the quiet, sober, beautiful and restful affection +you now scorn becomes in your eyes a haven of peace from the storm and +stress of life, and the highest good it contains.</p> + +<p>Another reason why the Marriage of Affection is the most likely to +prove a success is because mutual respect enters so largely into its +composition, and how enormously important this is in the holy estate, +none can realise until they marry. I shall have more to say later +about the urgent necessity for respect in married life.</p> + + +<span class = "pagenum">68</span> + +<h4><a name = "chapII_II" id = "chapII_II">II</a><br> +<span class = "subhead">WHY WE FALL OUT: DIVERS DISCORDS</span></h4> + +<blockquote> +‘And yet when all has been said, the man who should hold back from +marriage is in the same case with him who runs away from battle.’ +<span class = "author">—R. L. Stevenson.</span></blockquote> + + +<p><span class = "firstword">We</span> have discussed those types of +marriage more or less doomed to failure from the outset, and now come to +the reason why so many matches prove unhappy when apparently every +circumstance has been favourable.</p> + +<p>It was Socrates, I think, who said: ‘Whether you marry or whether you +remain unmarried, you will repent it.’ The people who assert that +marriage is a failure seem to lose sight of the fact that the estate was +not ordained for the purpose of happiness, but to meet the necessities +of society, and so long as these necessities are fulfilled by marriage, +then the institution must be pronounced successful, however unhappy +married people may be.</p> + +<span class = "pagenum">69</span> +<p>If the reasons ‘why we fell out, my wife and I,’ were to be +considered exhaustively, the subject would overflow the bounds of this +modest volume and run into several hundred giant tomes; indeed I believe +an entire library could be filled with books on this matter alone. Ever +since Adam and Eve had a few words over their dessert, husbands and +wives have gone on quarrelling continuously and the humble philosopher +who said that certain people quarrelled ‘bitter and reg’lar, like man +and wife,’ was merely describing a condition that habit had made +familiar to him.</p> + +<p>As with the rest of life, in matrimony it is the little things that +count, and the frail barque of married happiness founders principally on +the insignificant, half-perceived rocks—the little jealousies, +little denials, little irritations, little tempers, little biting words, +which by degrees wear so many little holes in the stern that at last an +irreparable leak is sprung and the ship goes down in the next storm. The +big obstacles make a worse crash when they <i>do</i> get in the way, but +they can be seen from afar and steered clear of.</p> + +<span class = "pagenum">70</span> +<p>A miserable husband who had come to the parting of the ways (having +started in the madly-in-love section), once confided in me that the +bitter and terrible quarrels between him and his wife always began for +some utterly trivial reason, generally because he did not admire her +clothes! Could anything be more pitifully absurd? ‘Then why,’ +I asked, ‘as you’re so anxious to keep the peace, do you volunteer +any criticism at all?’ ‘Oh, I never do,’ was the answer. ‘She asks +me my opinion of a new gown, say, and gets angry when it’s unfavourable. +Then of course I get angry too, I’m no saint, and presently we come to +curses and words that sting like blows. Then I clear out for a couple of +days, and of course there’s the devil to pay when I go back, and it +begins all over again. Why, this present row has lasted five weeks or +so, and in the beginning it was simply because I said I didn’t like the +ostrich feather in her hat!’</p> + +<p>Again: I once met at a race-meeting a school-friend, long lost sight +of, whom I had last seen as a newly-wedded wife, loving and beloved. She +was now very much changed, hard and haggard of face. I asked +<span class = "pagenum">71</span> +after the man I remembered as a radiant bridegroom.</p> + +<p>‘Oh, he’s gone the way of all husbands,’ she said, with a sigh; +‘liver, my dear.’</p> + +<p>‘Do you mean he’s dead?’ I asked, shocked and pained.</p> + +<p>‘Oh, dear, no, he’s alive enough, but he’s developed liver and that’s +killed our love,’ was the cynical reply.</p> + +<p>It had. Devotion and dyspepsia are hard to reconcile and my friend’s +husband had developed a nasty knack of throwing his dinner in the fire +whenever it displeased him, a habit hardly conducive to home +happiness.</p> + +<p>Food, as a fact, is one of the chief sources of friction in married +life. It sounds farcical, but I am perfectly serious. Food, the ordering +and cooking of it and the subsequent paying for it, is one of the great +tragedies of a wife’s existence. Time, the great healer, mercifully +deadens the intensity of this anguish, and matrons of fifty or so can +face the daily burden of food-ordering with something like indifference. +But to a woman who has not yet reached the fatal landmark aptly +described as ‘the same age as everybody else, namely, thirty-five,’ it +is the +<span class = "pagenum">72</span> +greatest cross, whilst many a bride has had her early married life +totally ruined by the horrid and ever recurring necessity of finding +food for her partner. Men make fun of women because their dinner, when +alone, so often consists of an egg for tea, but women have such a +constitutional hatred of food-ordering, inherited, no doubt, from a long +line of suffering female ancestry, that the majority of them would +gladly live on tea and bread-and-butter for the rest of their lives +sooner than face the necessity of daily meditating on a menu. For this +reason I believe vegetarian husbands are particularly desirable, since +the whole principle of food-reform is simplicity. Those who go in for it +acquire an entirely fresh set of ideas on the importance of food, and +become quite pathetically easily pleased. I know a woman whose +husband is a vegetarian and she declared that the food question, so +disturbing a factor in most homes, had never caused her a single tear, +or frown, or angry word, or added wrinkle. She assured me that her +husband would cheerfully breakfast off a banana, lunch off a lettuce, +dine on a date and sup on a salted almond. When the +<span class = "pagenum">73</span> +house was upset on the occasion of a large evening party and there were +no conveniences for the ordinary family dinner, the creature actually +ate cheese sandwiches in the bathroom, by way of a dinner, and was quite +pleased to do so, moreover! I could scarcely credit it at first, +but it was really true.</p> + +<p>Of the many paltry little causes for friction in married life +incompatibility of temperature has doubtless been a very fruitful source +of dissension. If one shivers when the window is opened and the other is +a fresh-air faddist and can’t breathe with it shut, an endless vista of +possibilities of unhappiness is opened out. It was, I believe, +Napoleon’s second wife, Marie Louise, who always got rid of her husband +when she wished to, by merely keeping her apartments cold. The great man +was only comfortable in a very hot room with a blazing fire.</p> + +<p>That grievous deficiency, no sense of humour, is another of the tiny +little rocks on which married happiness often splits. This is natural +enough, since an absence of this priceless quality is about the worst +deprivation a traveller on life’s journey can suffer from. Among men the +conviction is +<span class = "pagenum">74</span> +rife that women invariably suffer thus, but I think we can afford to +leave them this delusion, since it affords them so much satisfaction. At +one time I had a journalist friend of a painfully stodgy and unusually +depressing literary habit. This poor soul fancied his vein was humour, +and from him I have often endured the reading aloud of the dreariest +laboured pages of japes and jests, which to his thinking were sparkling +with wit. My patient, long-suffering listening only brought bitter +derision for my alleged lack of humorous perception, but my criticism +inspired the young man to write a cynical article on ‘Women and Humour,’ +of the kind that editors—being men—delight in, and for which +he consequently got well paid.</p> + +<p>As a fact, the things that amuse men frequently fail to amuse women +and <i>vice versâ</i> but it is surely illogical to deduce from this +that women’s humorous sense is inferior to men’s—or non-existent. +As, however, this apparently insignificant question is of such +importance in life generally, whether it be in a palace, a convent, +a villa or a workhouse—I think a wife would be well-advised +to +<span class = "pagenum">75</span> +assume amusement if she feels it not, laugh with her lord even when she +doesn’t see the point, and cultivate indifference when he fails to laugh +with her.</p> + +<p>Writers on marriage seem to have paid very little attention to this +important point. Stevenson is one of the exceptions: ‘That people should +laugh over the same sort of jest,’ he says, ‘and have many an old joke +between them which time cannot wither or custom stale is a better +preparation for life, by your leave, than many other things higher and +better-sounding in the world’s ears. You could read Kant by yourself, if +you wanted; but you must share a joke with someone else.’</p> + +<p>In a beautiful poem, Stephen Phillips describes how a bereaved lover +can think calmly of his dead, when he looked at her possessions, the +things she had worn, even when he read her letters; and her saddest +words had no power to pain him, but when he came to—</p> + +<div class = "verse"> +<p>‘A hurried, happy line!</p> +<p>A little jest too slight for one so dead:</p> +<p>This did I not endure—</p> +<p>Then with a shuddering heart no more I read,’</p> +</div> + +<span class = "pagenum">76</span> +<p>In truth, the little joke shared, the old allusion at which both are +accustomed to laugh, is a more potent bond than many a deeper feeling. +One can recall these trifles long after one has forgotten the poignant +moments of passion, the breathless heartbeats, the wild embraces which +at the time seemed to promise such deathless memories. All, all are +forgotten, but the silly little joke has still the power to bring tears +to our eyes if the one with whom we shared it is lost to us.</p> + +<p class = "space"> +A great many people are wretched who would have been perfectly happy +with another partner. ‘In the inequalities of temperament lies the main +cause of unhappiness in marriage. Want of harmony in tastes counts for +much, but a misfit in temperament for more.’ So ludicrously mismated are +some couples that one wonders how they could ever have dreamed of +finding happiness together. This again is frequently the fault of our +absurd conventions, which make it so difficult for single young men and +women to really get to know each other. However, things have improved so +much in this direction during the +<span class = "pagenum">77</span> +last decade or two that we ought not to grumble, but, even now, if a man +show a decided preference for a girl’s company his name is at once +coupled with hers in a manner which can but alarm a youth devoid of +matrimonial intentions. That relic of the dark ages, the +intention-asking parent, is by no means extinct, and many a promising +friendship that might have ended in a happy marriage is spoilt by the +clumsy intervention of this barbaric relative.</p> + +<p>A young barrister friend of mine—we will call him +Anthony—once tried, for reasons of professional policy, to make +himself agreeable to a solicitor with a very large family of daughters. +Being a shrewd man, he selected one of the girls still in the schoolroom +to pay particular attention to, and thus escaped the necessity of +showing special interest in her elder and marriageable sisters. His +intimacy with the family prospered, and the father became a very useful +patron. However, as time went on, he discovered to his dismay that his +little friend, Amaryllis, had grown up and that he was regarded in the +family as her special property. Speedily he transferred his attachment +to Aphrodite, the youngest +<span class = "pagenum">78</span> +girl then in the schoolroom, and by this means saved himself from an +entanglement with Amaryllis, whilst at the same time preserving the +valuable friendship of her father. In an incredibly short time, however, +Aphrodite was nubile, and the family once more expectant of securing +Anthony as a permanent member. Once again he executed the same manœuvre, +choosing this time the little Andromeda, a plain child still in the +nursery. The family, though disappointed, remained hopeful, and the +years passed peacefully on, bringing a few sons-in-law in their train, +and innumerable boxes of sweets to the unprepossessing Andromeda. When, +however, Andromeda too grew up, the wily Anthony feared his fruitful +friendship must inevitably come to an end, since the only remaining +daughter had already reached the dangerous age of fifteen, and bore +moreover the improper name of Anactoria!</p> + +<p>A long friendship and a short engagement is perhaps the best +combination. A prolonged engagement is the most trying relationship +between the sexes possible to conceive. For the woman it means the +drawbacks of matrimony without its charm of +<span class = "pagenum">79</span> +restful finality, or any of its solid worldly advantages. On the man’s +side it means the irksomeness of the marriage yoke without any of its +satisfactions and comforts. On the man, indeed, a long engagement +is especially hard, as at least the woman is spared the burden of +ordering his food and coping with his servants. Many a sincere affection +has been killed by the restraints and irritations of a long engagement. +Many a genuine passion has waned during its dreary course, until but a +feeble spark of the great flame is left to light the wedded life, and +both man and woman carry the mark of that suppressed ardour which, under +happier circumstances, might have come to a joyous fruition. Their +children, too, sometimes lack vitality, and show the need of the fire +that died before they were begotten.</p> + +<p class = "space"> +I don’t know who it was who first coined the phrase ‘the appalling +intimacy of married life’; certainly it is an apt expression, and one +wonders at what period in the world’s history men and women began to +find that intimacy ‘appalling.’ It sounds a modern enough complaint, and +somehow one feels sure it was +<span class = "pagenum">80</span> +never indulged in by our grandmothers, who looked upon their husbands as +a kind of visible embodiment of the Lord’s Will, and respected them +accordingly. They would never have dreamed of finding irksome what Mrs +Lynn Linton called the ‘<i>chair-à-chair</i> closeness of the English +home.’</p> + +<p>Much has been written of the degradation of love by habit, and +Alexandre Dumas expresses the whole question to perfection in one +crystal sentence: ‘In marriage when love exists habit kills it; when +love does not exist habit calls it into being.’ This is profoundly true, +and for every passion habit has killed it must certainly have created +more genuine affections.</p> + +<p>The Spartan plan of allowing husband and wife to meet only by stealth +shows an acute understanding of human nature and has much to recommend +it, if the object in view is to prolong the period of passion. But we +are not now dealing with passion, but with the ordinary affection +between people who have to live together under the trying conditions of +modern marriage, and in these circumstances one must agree with Dumas as +to the wonders worked by habit.</p> + +<span class = "pagenum">81</span> +<p>Indeed, if people only realised it, habit is the cement which holds +the edifice of matrimony together. With the passing of years, given the +slightest basis of mutual harmony, one’s partner becomes +indispensable—not by reason of her charms or the love we bear him, +but simply because she or he is a part of our lives. That is why I think +the policy of constant separation foolish. It is based presumably on the +erroneous supposition that absence makes the heart grow fonder. Where +the basis of mutual harmony does <i>not</i> exist, it may be true; and +if a couple dislike each other and get on badly, a short separation +may serve to relieve the tension, and to send them back each resolved to +try and make things smoother in future. But where affection exists, it +is a mistake. One learns to do without the other; that linking chain of +little daily intimacies, oft-repeated jests, endearing customs, is +temporarily snapped, and it is not easily put together again. My friend +Miranda said to me not long ago: ‘If Lysander’s been away from me a day +I’ve heaps to talk about when he returns—if we’ve been parted a +month, I’ve nothing on earth to say.’</p> + +<p>I think it is de <ins class = "correction" title = +"spelling unchanged">la Rochfoucauld</ins> who says: +<span class = "pagenum">82</span> +‘Absence deepens great passions and lessens little ones just as the wind +puts out the candle and heightens the fire.’ This is fine from the +literary point of view, but is it true? My experience says No. Yet +<i>during</i> the absence this aphorism seems true enough. Disillusion +comes with reunion. Who does not remember that first departure of the +Beloved—the innumerable letters, the endless meditation, the +ceaseless yearning and the everlasting planning for the glorious return? +What a meeting that is going to be! How one dwells in thought on that +first goodly satisfaction of the desire of the eyes; goodlier still that +joyous clasping of the hands; goodliest of all that glorious locking of +the lips, that unending embrace in the ecstasy of which all the wretched +hours of absence are to be forgotten—and, oh! laughter of the +gods! how different it really proves! What a hideous disappointment the +meeting is! How different the Beloved looks from our passionate dream; +his hair wants cutting; we don’t like his boots; his tie is not of our +choosing; his speech does not please us; his kiss has no thrill; his +remarks bore; his presence irritates: in short, <i>we have learnt to +<span class = "pagenum">83</span> +do without him</i>, so nothing he does seems right. Poor Beloved! and +did you think the same of us? Are you disappointed too? Did you say to +yourself: ‘How fagged she looks! By Jove! she’s getting a double chin. +I thought pink used to suit her. What’s she done to her hair? Her +voice seems sharper. Why does she laugh like that? I don’t like her +teeth. Good heavens, the woman’s hideous!’ In short, <i>he has learnt to +do without us</i>. When husbands and wives learn this lesson, the good +ship ‘Wedded Bliss’ is getting into perilous waters where danger of +utter wreck looms large.</p> + +<p>But it is equally fatal to go to the other extreme, and I entirely +agree with that authoress (who was she?) who said that no house could be +expected to go on properly unless the male members of the family are out +of it for at least six hours daily, Sundays excepted. The woman whose +husband’s occupation, or lack of it, keeps him at home all day has my +profound sympathy. Merely to have to think out and order a man’s lunch +as well as his breakfast and dinner must be a bitter trial. For this +reason among others women should never marry a man who does +<span class = "pagenum">84</span> +not work at <i>something</i>. If he has no bread-winning business to +remove him from his wife’s sphere of action for several hours daily, +then he must have a hobby, or a game mania, or engrossing duties which +serve the same purpose. Otherwise the wife must be constituted on a +plane of inhuman goodness and possess infinite love, tact, and patience +if the two are to live happily together.</p> + +<p>The same principle applies to women, though it is not generally +recognised. I am convinced that a great number of middle-class +marriages prove unhappy merely because the woman has not enough to do. +Possessed of sufficient servants, her household duties occupy a very +small portion of her leisure, and if her children are at school +(or perhaps she has none) she has nothing more engrossing to do +than read novels and pay visits. The result is that one type of woman +cultivates nerves and becomes a neurasthenic semi-invalid; another +cultivates the opposite sex and fills her leisure hours with undesirable +philandering; another develops temper or melancholy or jealous fancies; +and so on—all of them spoilt as companions merely for want of +sufficient occupation.</p> + + +<span class = "pagenum">85</span> + +<h4><a name = "chapII_III" id = "chapII_III">III</a><br> +<span class = "subhead">THE AGE TO MARRY</span></h4> + +<blockquote> +‘To me the extraordinary thing is not that so many people remain +unmarried, but that so many rush into marriage, as they might rush into +a station to catch a train. And if you catch the wrong train, what then? +All you have to comfort you is the fact that you have travelled.’ +<span class = "author">—Robert Hichens.</span></blockquote> + + +<p><span class = "firstword">A great</span> many unhappy unions might be +prevented if people could find their right age for marrying. As it +differs with the individual, it is impossible to lay down any exact +rule. Some men are capable of making a good choice at twenty-two; others +don’t know their own minds at double that age. Some girls are fit for +wifehood and maternity in their teens; others never.</p> + +<p>In the interests of abstract morality early marriages are desirable, +and in England everything the law can do is done to encourage them. In +France the preservation of family authority is considered all-important, +and the law apparently tries to check early unions by +<span class = "pagenum">86</span> +every means in its power, regardless of the high percentage of +illegitimate births which is the direct consequence.<a class = "tag" +name = "tag3" id = "tag3" href = "#note3">3</a></p> + +<p>Broadly speaking, no woman should wed until she understands something +of life, has met a good many men, has acquired a certain knowledge of +physiology and eugenics and a clear understanding of what marriage +really means. No woman should marry until she has learnt the value of +money, and how to manage a household—until she has had plenty of +girlish fun and gaiety, and is thus ready for the more serious things of +life. Not until then is she likely to be happy in the monotony of +wedlock or capable of attuning her mind to the necessity of being +faithful to one man only, in thought as well as in deed. Broadly +speaking, also, no man is likely to marry happily until he has seen life +and plenty of it, has hammered out for himself something of a philosophy +and obtained considerable knowledge of women and a consequent +understanding of how to make one happy.</p> + +<span class = "pagenum">87</span> +<p>This is not so easily done as men suppose, and it takes time to +learn. Few men under thirty are fit to have the care of a wife, and +Heaven preserve a girl from a young husband who is still a cub! No doubt +she will have glorious moments, for there is something intoxicating +about the ardour of a very young heart, and that is why we find boy and +girl marriages so charming—in theory. Sometimes in the case of an +exceptional couple, well suited to each other, they really are charming, +and then it is the most beautiful marriage conceivable—two young +things, starting off hand in hand on life’s journey, brave-hearted, +loving, full of high hopes. But as a rule the glory is limited to +moments only; young girls are mostly shallow and frivolous; very young +men are often madly selfish and reckless. They are so proud of being the +sole possessor of an attractive woman that their conceit, always +immense, swells into monstrous proportions and they grow wholly +unbearable. If dark days should come to the young couple, the +boy-husband has no philosophy to support him, no knowledge of women to +enable him to understand his wife and live happily with her, +<span class = "pagenum">88</span> +and little self-control for his help; she has the same defects of youth, +and the result is failure. Stevenson puts it perfectly thus: ‘You may +safely go to school with hope, but before you marry you should have +learned the mingled lesson of the world.’ On the other hand, Grant Allen +says that ‘the best of men are, so to speak, born married,’ and that it +is only the selfish, mean, and calculating man who waits till he can +afford to marry. ‘That vile phrase scarcely veils hidden depths of +depravity,’ he continues. ‘The right sort of man doesn’t argue with +himself at all on these matters. He doesn’t say, with selfish coldness: +“I can’t afford a wife”; or “If I marry now I shall ruin my +prospects.” He feels and acts. He mates like the birds, because he can’t +help himself.’</p> + +<p>I must say that these young men who do not think, but merely feel and +act, scarcely seem of the highest type in my opinion, and if mating like +the birds were to be generally accepted as a sign of a noble +nature—well, nobility would be decidedly less rare than at +present!</p> + + +<span class = "pagenum">89</span> + +<h4><a name = "chapII_IV" id = "chapII_IV">IV</a><br> +<span class = "subhead">WILD OATS FOR WIVES</span></h4> + +<blockquote> +‘Nothing that is worth saying is proper.’ +<span class = "author">—G. Bernard Shaw.</span></blockquote> + +<blockquote> +‘I don’t believe in the existence of Puritan women. I don’t think there +is a woman in the world who would not be a little flattered if one made +love to her. It is that which makes woman so irresistibly adorable.’ +<span class = "author">—Oscar Wilde.</span></blockquote> + + +<p><span class = "firstword">If</span> there be any readers whose +susceptibilities are shocked by this headline, they are respectfully +requested—nay, commanded—to read no further. If there be any +whose susceptibilities waver without as yet experiencing any actual +shock, they are affectionately asked—nay, implored—to +re-read several times the above quotation from Mr Shaw’s immortal +<i>Candida</i>, to thereupon pull themselves together and take the +plunge. I can promise them it won’t be anything like as terrible as +they half hope—in fact its essential propriety will probably +disappoint them bitterly!</p> + +<span class = "pagenum">90</span> +<p>Curiously enough, though women are more anxious to marry than men, +and do everything in their power to achieve what men often strive to +resist—after marriage it is generally the woman who is most +discontented. Of late years a spirit of strange unrest has come over +married women, and they frequently rebel against conditions which our +grandmothers would never have dreamed of murmuring at. There are a +variety of causes for this: one that marriage falls short of women’s +expectations, as I said in the opening chapter, another that they have +had no <i>feminine</i> wild oats. Please note the qualifying adjective, +duly italicised, and do not attempt to misunderstand me. I am no +advocate of the licence generally accorded to men being extended to +women.</p> + +<p>‘Wild oats’ of this nature, otherwise an ante-hymeneal ‘fling,’ was +certainly not a necessity of our grandmothers, but a certain (fairly +numerous) type of modern women seem to make better wives when they have +reaped this harvest. Take for example the cases of Yvonne and Yvette +which are personally known to me. Yvette was engaged at eighteen and +married at twenty-one. At the +<span class = "pagenum">91</span> +age of twenty-six she was the mother of four children. She had scarcely +time to realise what youth meant and begin to enjoy it before her +girlhood was stifled under the responsibilities of marriage and +maternity. She had accepted her first offer, and he was practically the +only man she knew anything of. Beyond him she had seen nothing of men, +or of the world; certainly she had never flirted or had men friends or +enjoyed any admiration but that of her <i>fiancé</i>.</p> + +<p>At twenty-six Yvette began to realise that she had been cheated out +of a very precious part of life and an invaluable experience. Though a +fairly happy wife and a devoted mother, she felt that she might have had +those lost delights as well as the domestic joys, and the knowledge +enraged her.</p> + +<p>A dangerous spirit of curiosity entered her heart, and a still more +dangerous longing for adventure and excitement. She realised that there +were other men in the world who admired her besides her Marcus, and that +she was pretty and still quite a young woman. At thirty Yvette was a +mistress of the art of intrigue—had engineered several dangerous +<i>affaires</i>, and might have come to serious grief +<span class = "pagenum">92</span> +had not Marcus been a singularly wise, tender, and understanding +husband.</p> + +<p>‘It isn’t that I don’t love him dearly,’ she confided in me when +resolving to turn over a new leaf. ‘I wouldn’t exchange him for +anyone in the world, and you know what the children are to me—but +somehow I want something else as well—some excitement. I feel +I’ve had no <i>fun</i> in my life, and I wanted to have a fling before +it was too late. When I was engaged I scarcely ever even danced with +anyone but Marcus, and for the first four years of my married life I had +a baby every eighteen months—it was nothing but babies, nursing +the old one and getting ready for the new one! Not that I didn’t love +it, but the reaction was bound to come, and it did. If only I could have +had the excitement and the gaiety and the glamour first, and then +married when I was about twenty-five, I should have been perfectly +satisfied then, like Yvonne!’</p> + +<p>Yvonne certainly managed her affairs better. Fate saved her from the +misfortune of falling in love too soon. She always had a train of +admirers, and was enabled to enjoy the power of her womanhood to the +full; she travelled, made delightful friendships with both sexes, +<span class = "pagenum">93</span> +learnt to know the world and acquired a philosophy of life. When she +married, at twenty-nine, she had seen enough of other men to know +exactly the kind of husband she wanted, and had had enough excitement to +make her appreciate the peace and calm of matrimony.</p> + +<p>The secrets of many wives lie heavily on my soul as I write, and more +than one woman, with some real reason for remorse, has confided in me +that it was only that fatal desire for excitement that primarily caused +her undoing. I shall instruct my son to be sure to marry a woman +who has got her wild oats safely over, or select a wife of the more +old-fashioned type who does not require them. With the modern +temperament they must almost inevitably come sooner or later, and to +what extent the modern temperament will have evolved by the time the Boy +of Boys is marriageable, the ironical gods alone know!</p> + +<p>Bachelors take note! A woman—new style—who has knocked +about over half the world and sown a mild crop of the delectable cereal +will prove a far better wife, a more cheery friend and faithful +comrade than the girl <i>of more or less the same type</i> whose +<span class = "pagenum">94</span> +first experience you are, and who will make enormous claims on your love +and patience by reason of her utter ignorance of men. You will possibly +even have to live up to an ideal founded on novel-reading, and that you +will find very wearing, my friend! The experienced woman knows men so +thoroughly, she will expect nothing more of you than you can give her, +and will appreciate your virtues to the utmost and make the best of your +vices. ‘But she has flirted so outrageously,’ you say? Well, so much the +better, she is less likely to do it after marriage. ‘But, hang it all, +she has been kissed by other men,’ you say? Well then, she has no need +for further experiences of this kind and is not likely ever to give her +lips again to others once she is yours. . . . How can you +be sure? That is one of the innumerable risks of marriage. How can +<i>she</i> be sure that <i>your</i> last crop is sown, still less +reaped? . . . Oh, my dear man, you really make me very +angry—do for heaven’s sake try and get away from conventional +ideas of right and wrong! Judge things <i>for yourself</i>, and as they +would seem, say, at the edge of an active volcano! . . . +All the things we fuss so much about +<span class = "pagenum">95</span> +would doubtless quickly assume their real value if viewed from this +perilous situation.</p> + +<p>And even in the sad cases where a woman has sown real wild oats in +the man’s sense of the word, how different the little moral rules and +regulations which we keep for these occasions would appear in the face +of an immediate and violent death. I heard not long ago of a very +sad story which bears this out. A man very narrowly escaped death +from drowning, shortly after he had broken his engagement with a girl he +genuinely loved, on her confessing to him that, many years before, she +had once yielded to the importunities of a passionate lover. I do +not know what were his emotions in the awful moment when the waters +closed over him, and he was experiencing that horrible fight for breath +which those who have known it describe as the most terrible sensation +conceivable. Apparently his hairbreadth escape from death tore from his +eyes the swathings of conventional opinion with which he had been +blinded. Instead of regarding himself as a deeply wronged man he +realised that he had behaved horribly to the unfortunate girl, who had +thus been doubly outraged by his sex. +<span class = "pagenum">96</span> +He sought her at once and begged to be taken back again, but she +happened to be a woman of some spirit, and she refused to trust herself +to a man of such narrow views, and given to such harsh judgment.</p> + +<p>Of course this treatment increased his love a thousandfold. It +obsessed him to a painful degree, and in the end his desperate +entreaties prevailed on her deep affection for him and she relented. +Their marriage was not very happy, as may be imagined; they both loved +to madness and the ghost of that dead passion stood ever between them, +an invisible, poisonous presence that killed their joy in each other. +After a time a deep melancholy settled on the woman, and she allowed +some trifling illness to take such a hold on her that it caused her +death.</p> + +<p>When she was dying, I am told, she said to her faithful friend: ‘If +ever you meet another woman who has made one little slip—a thing +which at the time seemed so natural and inevitable as not to be sin at +all—tell her never <i>never</i> to confess it to the man she is +going to marry, least of all if she loves him. If that confession +doesn’t part them altogether, it will always be between +<span class = "pagenum">97</span> +them. One does it wishing to be straight, but it’s the most dreadful +mistake a woman can make.’</p> + +<p>Her wish to be straight had cost this poor woman not only her whole +life’s happiness, and her very life itself, but the happiness of the man +she loved, in whose interests she had made the confession that wrought +the harm. ‘How dearly I have paid! how dearly I have paid!’ she used to +say over and over again in her last illness.</p> + +<p>This is an absolutely true story, and it seems to me a burning +injustice that a woman should suffer so bitterly for what would be +absolutely disregarded in a man. I have no doubt there are many +similar cases, and emphatically I say that such confessions are +ill-advised. The ordinary conventional-thinking man placed in these +circumstances would either throw a woman over, or marry her against his +convictions. The extraordinary masculine code, for some reason beyond my +feminine powers of comprehension, will not admit that a spinster who has +had a lover, or even made one ‘false step,’ is a fit person to wed, +though no man would object to marrying a widow, and +<span class = "pagenum">98</span> +many men take respondent <i>divorcées</i> to wife.</p> + +<p>Even in the case of a rarely generous-minded, tolerant and +understanding man, who judged the offence at its true computation, such +knowledge would only prove disturbing and a source of insecurity to +conjugal happiness. No good purpose of any kind can be served, and the +ease which confession is proverbially supposed to gain for the sinner +would be bought at a very heavy price.</p> + +<p>‘But two wrongs don’t make a right, and surely it can’t be proper for +a woman to deceive a man on such a vital point,’ the stern moralist may +exclaim. Possibly not, according to the strictly ideal standard of +ethics; but, viewed from the larger standpoints of life and of +commonsense, this ‘deceit’ would appear to be advisable. And be assured, +my unpleasant moralist (I’m sure you are an unpleasant person), that the +sinner will not get off ‘scot free,’ as you seem to fear. Many and many +a stab will be her portion, for memory is a potent poison, and every +expression of love and trust from her husband will most likely carry its +own special sting, whilst the round, innocent eyes of +<span class = "pagenum">99</span> +adoring little children, to whom she is a being that can do no wrong, +will be a meet punishment for an infinitely greater fault. Meanwhile the +man is <i>in all probability</i> in every way a gainer by the woman’s +silence, for doubtless he is doubly dear to her for the very fact that +the first man treated her badly, and she may perhaps be a better wife, +a stronger and sweeter woman, a more capable mother, by reason +of the suffering she has undergone.</p> + +<p>Now let no maliciously obtuse person attribute to me the pernicious +doctrine that a woman with a past is the best wife for a man. +I merely say that a good woman who has surrendered herself to an +ardent lover and been afterwards deserted by him must necessarily have +gone through such intense suffering that her character is probably +deepened thereby and her capacity for love and faithfulness increased. +It is another truism that suffering is necessary to bring out the best +qualities in women.</p> + +<p>Men too should keep the details of their wild oats severely to +themselves. In married life there are bound to be secrets and the +happiest couples are those who know how to +<span class = "pagenum">100</span> +keep them, each to him or her self. A very good motto for the newly +betrothed would be that of Tom Broadbent in <i>John Bull’s Other +Island</i>—‘Let us have no tellings—perfect confidence, but +no tellings: that’s the way to avoid rows!’</p> + + +<span class = "pagenum">101</span> + +<h4><a name = "chapII_V" id = "chapII_V">V</a><br> +<span class = "subhead">A PLEA FOR THE WISER TRAINING OF +GIRLS</span></h4> + + +<p><span class = "firstword">If</span> girls were more reasonably +trained with regard to matters of sex, there would be far fewer +miserable wives in the world, and fewer husbands would be driven to seek +happiness outside their home circle. If, when girls reach years of +discretion, they were systematically taught some rudimentary outline of +the fundamental principles of existence, instead of being left in utter +ignorance as at present, the extraordinarily false notions of sex which +they now pick up would cease to obtain, and a great deal of harm would +thus be avoided. As it is, maidens are now given tacitly to understand +that the subject of sex is a repulsive one, wholly unfit for their +consideration, and the functions of sex are loathsome, though necessary. +I write tacitly with intention, for little if anything is ever said +to a girl on this subject; indeed, it is extraordinary how the ideas are +conveyed to her without words, but inculcated somehow they +<span class = "pagenum">102</span> +certainly are, and it is difficult to understand how mothers manage to +reconcile this teaching with their evident wish that their girls should +marry. The ideal held up to girls nowadays is apparently the sexless +sort of Diana one—not merely chastity, but sterility.</p> + +<p>Most girls are aware from a very early age of the social advantages +and importance of marriage, and grow up with a keen desire to accomplish +it in due course, although secretly dreading it, because of their absurd +perverted ideas of its physical side. Why cannot girls—and boys +too, for that matter—be taught the plain truth (in suitable +language of course) that sex is the pivot on which the world turns, that +the instincts and emotions of sex are common to humanity, and in +themselves not base or degrading, nor is there any cause for shame in +possessing them, although it is necessary that they should be +strenuously controlled. Why cannot girls be taught that <i>all love</i>, +even the romantic love which occupies so large a portion of their +dreams, <i>springs from the instinct of sex</i>?<a class = "tag" name = +"tag4" id = "tag4" href = "#note4">4</a> This may be thought a dangerous +lesson, but the present policy of silence on this subject +<span class = "pagenum">103</span> +is far more dangerous, inducing as it does a tendency to brood over the +forbidden theme.</p> + +<p>I remember when in my early teens a schoolfellow of about fifteen +confided in me that ‘a man’—he was a harmless boy of about +twenty—had kissed her hand when passing her a tennis racquet. She +drew her hand indignantly away, and said: ‘How dare you insult me!’ then +left the tennis court and refused to play any more. I do not think +many girls are so silly as this, but the incident illustrates the +general tone inculcated at that school. And it shows what an emphasis on +sex matters the girl’s mind had received, when she saw an insult in a +perfectly innocent and courteous act of admiring homage. What a harmful +preparation for life such training must be! This is the kind of teaching +that results in those wretched honeymoons which one occasionally hears +of in secret, and which produces unwilling wives whose disdainful +coldness is their husbands’ despair. This lack of feeling and lack of +comprehension of the needs of stronger, warmer natures is one of the +deepest and most incurable causes of married misery.</p> + +<span class = "pagenum">104</span> +<p>Let us teach our girls to regard sex as a <i>natural</i> and +<i>ordinary</i> fact, and the infinite evils which spring from regarding +it as extraordinary and repulsive will thus be avoided. Let us bring +them up to think that loving wifehood, passionate motherhood are the +proper expression of a woman’s nature and the best possible life for +her.</p> + +<p>In a very interesting book called <i>Woman in Transition</i>, +recently published, this view of woman’s destiny is repeatedly scoffed +at. The writer, Annette B. Meakin, is a fellow of the Anthropological +Institute, and evidently widely read and travelled. I will give a +few quotations: ‘In the happy future when higher womanly ideals have +spread around us we shall all realise, no matter to which sex we belong, +that to hold unqualified motherhood before every girl’s eyes as her +highest ideal is to play the traitor to our race and to humanity.’ +. . . ‘English Head Mistresses—though often unmarried +themselves—still consider it their pious duty to tell their pupils +that motherhood is woman’s highest destiny, and the pupils +. . . make marriage their first aim, and other success in life +has consequently to take a second place.’ . . . ‘Some +<span class = "pagenum">105</span> +very good women in England are still telling our young girls that +motherhood is, for every woman, the worthiest goal, without suspecting +that the doctrine they preach is dangerously conducive to that legal +prostitution euphemistically known as loveless marriage, if not to +greater evils.’ . . . ‘How can any girl who has been taught +that maternity is woman’s only destiny dare to run the risk of +losing it?’</p> + +<p>In answer to these objections: of course no sane person would hold +<i>unqualified</i> motherhood up to girls as their noblest ideal. Nor +does any thoughtful individual believe that maternity is woman’s +<i>only</i> destiny. But as to <i>highest</i> (<i>i.e.</i> most noble) +destiny—if worthy motherhood (and by the word worthy I wish to +imply all the fine qualities of body and mind that go to produce +healthy, intelligent, and well-trained children) does not fulfil it, +I should like to know what does? In answer to this question that +naturally springs to the mind of every reader, Miss Meakin contents +herself with the statement: ‘In Finland and Australia, as in America and +Norway, the young girl is taught that woman’s highest destiny is within +the reach of every woman; +<span class = "pagenum">106</span> +that her highest destiny and her highest ideals depend, not on some man +who may or may not come her way, but on herself; and that the highest +ideal of womanhood is to be a true woman.’ This is well enough, but it +is far too vague to be held up as woman’s standard. We want a more +definite ideal than this to aim at. What, for instance, <i>is</i> a +‘true woman’ specifically? I should have thought the most essential +part of such a one’s outfit was her potentialities for wifehood and +motherhood.</p> + +<p>Miss Meakin blames teachers for inculcating the importance of +motherhood into their pupils’ minds with the result that ‘other success +in life has to take a second place.’ What then does this writer consider +ought to take the first place? Does she seriously think the success of +women in business or politics, as municipal councillors, as writers, +artists, thinkers, is of more importance than the success of women as +mothers? <i>Is it possible?</i> . . . I recall a poem of +W. E. Henley’s on the woman question, one line of which runs ‘God +in the garden laughed outright.’ Surely there must often be uproarious +laughter in heaven nowadays when +<span class = "pagenum">107</span> +the woman question is being discussed on earth!</p> + +<p>So much for abstract ideals, but when we come to facts I must admit +the lady’s argument is sound. ‘In a country where there are a million +and a half more women than men,’ she pertinently states, ‘it is worse +than foolish to teach young girls that motherhood is their highest +destiny. Such teaching, if persisted in, will lead to greater evils than +we care to contemplate even at a distance.’ But what greater evil could +there possibly be than the existence of 30,000 prostitutes in London +alone, as is the case to-day? If every one of these unfortunate women +had been made to believe firmly, as an article of faith, that worthy +motherhood was her highest destiny, there might be a good many less +noughts to this number.</p> + +<p>Miss Meakin continues: ‘Besides the sacred duties of motherhood, +there are the equally sacred duties of fatherhood, yet man does not +allow these latter to interfere with his mental growth.’ Nor is there +any need that woman should do so; the idea that a woman, to be a good +wife and mother, must +<span class = "pagenum">108</span> +necessarily stunt her mental growth and forego all culture has long +since been discarded.</p> + +<p>To my mind the whole trouble arises from the practice of teaching one +set of catchwords to girls and another to boys, as Stevenson says. Since +women cannot be mothers by themselves, it is useless to teach girls that +motherhood is their highest destiny when we do not also teach boys that +fatherhood is theirs, but—quite the contrary—give them to +understand that marriage is something to be avoided, in early manhood at +least.</p> + +<p>If we were to instruct all young people of <i>both</i> sexes that +worthy marriage and parenthood are the highest destiny for average +mortals, and they acted on this precept, many of the problems of the day +would be solved, the numbers of superfluous women would be greatly +reduced, the social evil would perceptibly diminish, the physique of the +race would improve, and the birth-rate would quickly rise. In short, +there would be less ironical laughter in heaven, and a great deal more +honest happiness and health on earth! I shall have more to say of +parenthood as an ideal in Part IV.</p> + + +<span class = "pagenum">109</span> + +<h4><a name = "chapII_VI" id = "chapII_VI">VI</a><br> +<span class = "subhead">‘KEEPING ONLY TO HER’: THE CRUX OF +MATRIMONY</span></h4> + +<blockquote> +‘We make gods of men and they leave us; others make brutes of them and +they fawn and are faithful!’ +<span class = "author">—Oscar Wilde.</span></blockquote> + +<blockquote> +‘It is part of the curse of nature that a man ceases after a time to +worship the body of a woman, and when after that there is nothing his +mind and soul can revere—who shall remain true, as it is called?’ +<span class = "author">—Mary L. Pendered.</span></blockquote> + + +<p><span class = "firstword">‘And</span> keep thee only to her as long +as ye both shall live.’ How many men have solemnly undertaken this +exacting vow sincerely meaning to abide by it? I have no data for +answering this question, but I have sufficient belief in the essential +good in human nature to believe that most people start their married +life meaning to be faithful. This belief was not even shattered by the +shock of hearing a very modern bride remark the other day: ‘Max says he +can’t promise to be faithful but he’ll do his best.’ The amazing +<span class = "pagenum">110</span> +complacency of the young woman was a thing to marvel at, though hardly +to admire.</p> + +<p>Schopenhauer asserts that ‘Conjugal fidelity is artificial with men, +but natural to women.’ Judging by the Divorce Court returns, it would +seem that this natural feminine trait has weakened somewhat, since this +view was expressed some sixty years ago. According to the Society +chroniclers—self-appointed—it certainly has in ‘London’s +West End, littered with broken vows.’</p> + +<p>It is dangerous to generalise on such a topic, but since people +resist temptation far less often than moralists suppose, it is perhaps +safe to state that when men are faithful, it is principally from lack of +opportunity, or disinclination to be otherwise. This may disgust those +of my feminine readers who refuse to acknowledge, with Professor Lester +Ward, that man is essentially a polygamous animal, but the more +experienced in the sorrowful facts of life will own the truth of this +statement.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, when women break their marriage vow, it is seldom +for any merely frivolous or sordid reason (of course excepting the +essentially wanton type, whom +<span class = "pagenum">111</span> +no man should be fool enough to marry), but nearly always either because +they are under the spell of infatuation for the other man, or because +they are utterly miserable in their marriage and seek to drug themselves +to forgetfulness or indifference by means of the poison of some +intrigue. Perhaps the Judge who is more merciful than men will count +both these reasons as excuses and will pardon the sinners who have +greatly loved or greatly sorrowed.</p> + +<p>A doctor who is interested in the study of social questions once +showed me some interesting statistics on this subject. From seventy-six +men selected at random from his list of acquaintances, fourteen were +childless, and all but two of these were much happier than most men, and +gave their wives no cause for jealousy. This high percentage of happy +though childless marriages is rather curious—I cannot account for +it. Of the remaining sixty-two, all had families: five were fond of +their wives, but not faithful; two lived apart with other women; three +others were unhappily married, quarrelling bitterly and constantly. Of +two others, my friend was doubtful. One other disliked his +<span class = "pagenum">112</span> +wife, but was too busy to bother about other women. The remaining +forty-nine were comparatively happy and devoted: ‘Most of them are kept +free from any great temptation by busy lives and regular hours,’ the +doctor added, ‘and those who are especially appreciative or susceptible +in regard to the fair sex have had enough love-making, and want no more +outside their homes.’ I suspect this latter cause is applicable to +a great many so-called ‘model’ husbands!</p> + +<p>This list, however, can scarcely be considered representative, as it +contained only two actors, three soldiers, one sailor, and no +stockbrokers—four classes in which inconstant husbands are +particularly numerous. The conditions of an actor’s life obviously tend +towards infidelity; the unhealthy excitement and alternating depression +of a stockbroker’s existence may have the same effect. Members of the +services are popularly supposed to be less faithful than the rest of +husbands, but possibly if the business and professional men had the same +amount of opportunities and temptation, a similar excess of leisure +and equally long intervals of separation from their wives, they would +<span class = "pagenum">113</span> +prove as inconstant as the country’s defenders are supposed to be. My +doctor’s list also contains no members of the ‘Smart Set,’ a class +containing practically no faithful husbands, according to Father +Vaughan!</p> + +<p>Although it is the little things that spoil conjugal happiness, it is +the big things which separate husband and wife, and of these undoubtedly +infidelity is the most frequent cause. It might truly be called the crux +of marriage. Personally I think only three faults are bad enough to make +it socially worth while for a woman to leave her husband: drunkenness +with violence; misconduct with members of the household, temporary or +permanent; and introducing a mistress under a wife’s roof. In the case +of a woman with children, even these are not enough if she cannot take +the children with her. For the last-named act alone a wife could obtain +a divorce under the code of Justinian.</p> + +<p>Lapses from the marriage vow on the part of one’s spouse are best +treated, like all other troubles, in a philosophical spirit. It is, +however, ‘easy to talk!’—one often hears that sexual jealousy is +the most frightful +<span class = "pagenum">114</span> +of mental tortures: Men are more keenly affected by it than women, and +the man whose wife has been unfaithful seems to suffer more acutely, +even when he does not care for her, than the woman in the reverse +circumstances. That is because his passions are stronger, a man +will tell you, or because he looks up to the mother of his children as a +being above the sins of the flesh. Probably the real reason is that man +has generally had his own way since the <i>ménage</i> in Eden, and he +resents having his belongings taken from him. Woman, however, can bear +this deprivation better, being more accustomed to share her lord from +the time when her sex began to multiply in excess of his—or is it +that women have no instinctive antagonism to polygamy?</p> + +<p>The world has become well accustomed to man’s polygamous instinct by +now, and even its laws are framed accordingly. In novels, the discovery +of a husband’s infidelity always causes a perfect cataclysm; the reader +is treated to page after page of frenzied scenes; the wife almost loses +her reason; her friends and relatives sit in gloomy council deciding +‘what is to be done’; the +<span class = "pagenum">115</span> +news is shouted from the housetops; and everybody cuts the man dead.</p> + +<p>But in real life, women keep these tragedies to themselves, sometimes +bearing them with a strange calmness and philosophy. Fortunately a man +is seldom so lacking in worldly wisdom as to let his wife discover his +misconduct, and, as a rule, a woman would rather die than reveal +such a wound to the world. The burden of a husband’s infidelity is borne +for years in silence with smiling face and head held high, by many a +wife too proud to own herself incapable of keeping a man faithful. Only +when years have accustomed her to the humiliation, and dulled the sharp +edge of her grief, does she permit herself the relief of +confidences.</p> + +<p>Few women can understand why a husband, though fond of and devoted to +his wife, should nevertheless seek elsewhere that which she has ceased +to possess for him. She whose knowledge of the springs of life is deep +enough to enable her to understand this, knows also that hers is the +better part, that she represents to her husband the centre and +mainspring of his existence, which +<span class = "pagenum">116</span> +remains steadfast long after his temporary amorous madnesses have burned +away to ashes.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, after ‘Alone’—‘<i>Unfaithful</i>’ is perhaps the +saddest and most awful word in human speech. One can imagine it written +innumerable times, in flaming letters, across the confines of +Hell. . . . <i>Unfaithful!</i></p> + + +<div class = "page"> + +<span class = "pagenum">117</span> + +<h3><a name = "part_III" id = "part_III"> +PART III</a><br> +<span class = "subhead">SUGGESTED ALTERNATIVES</span></h3> + +<p>‘For me the only remedy to the mortal injustices, to the endless +miseries, to the often incurable passions which disturb the union of the +sexes, is the liberty of breaking up conjugal ties and forming them +again.’ +<span class = "author">—<ins class = "correction" title = +"text reads ‘Georges’">George</ins> Sand.</span></p> + +<p>‘Until the marriage tie is made more flexible, marriage will always +be a risk, which men particularly will undertake with misgiving.’ +<span class = "author">—H. B. Marriott-Watson.</span></p> + +</div> + + +<!-- 118 --> + +<span class = "pagenum">119</span> + +<h4><a name = "chapIII_I" id = "chapIII_I">I</a><br> +<span class = "subhead">LEASEHOLD MARRIAGE À LA MEREDITH</span></h4> + +<blockquote> +‘Twenty years of Romance make a woman look like a wreck; twenty years of +Marriage make her look like a public building.’ +<span class = "author">—Oscar Wilde.</span></blockquote> + + +<p><span class = "firstword">Leasehold</span> marriage was one of the +customs of early Roman society. Nowadays it has a revolutionary savour, +and is so apparently impracticable that it would be hardly necessary to +do more than touch upon it here, but for the fact that its most recent +and most distinguished advocate in modern times is Mr George Meredith. +Any suggestion from such a source must necessarily receive careful +consideration. It was also advanced by the great philosopher Locke, and +was considered by Milton.</p> + +<p>It is scarcely three years since our veteran novelist cast this +bombshell into a delighted, albeit disapproving Press; but as memories +are so short nowadays, perhaps a brief recapitulation of the +circumstances might not be amiss.</p> + +<span class = "pagenum">120</span> +<p>The beginning of the business was a letter to <i>The Times</i> by Mr +Cloudesly Brereton complaining of the ‘growing handicap of marriage’ +and, according to invariable custom, attacking women as the cause of it. +He stated that in the middle classes ‘the exigences of modern wives are +steadily undermining the attractions of matrimony; in her ever-growing +demands on her husband’s time, energy, and money the modern married +woman constitutes a very serious drag, and in the lower classes of +society, marriage even seriously militates against a man’s finding +work.’ How women can be held responsible for this last injustice was +wisely not stated. It would have been difficult to prove the indictment, +I think.</p> + +<p>This document’s chief claim to interest was the discussion in <i>The +Daily Mail</i> that followed it, and the curious fact that the writer +was married a few weeks after its publication! The usual abuse on +marriage in general and women in particular followed, until the late Mrs +Craigie joined the discussion, and brought to bear on it that peculiar +quality of tender understanding, that wonderful insight into women’s +hearts, which were among the most striking characteristics of her +brilliant work. +<span class = "pagenum">121</span> +It would be a pity to quote from such a letter, so I reproduce it in +full.</p> + +<p>‘Women, where their feelings are in question, are not selfish enough: +they appraise themselves not too dearly, but too cheaply: it is the +suicidal unselfishness of modern women which makes the selfishness of +modern bachelors possible. Bachelors are not all misogynists, and the +fact that a man remains unmarried is no proof that he is insensible to +the charm of woman’s companionship, or that he does not have such +companionship, on irresponsible terms, to a most considerable degree. +Why should the average vain young man, egoistic by organism and +education, work hard or make sacrifices for the sake of any particular +woman, while so many are too willing to share his life without joining +it, and so many more wait eagerly on his steps to destroy any chivalry +or tenderness he may have been born with? Modern women give bachelors no +time to miss them and no opportunity to need them. Their devotion is +undisciplined and it becomes a curse rather than a blessing to its +object. Why? Because women have this strange power of concentration and +self-abnegation in their love; they +<span class = "pagenum">122</span> +cannot do enough to prove their kindness; and when they have done all +and been at no pains to secure their own position, they realise they +have erred through excess of generosity and the desire to please. This +is the unselfishness shown towards bachelors.’</p> + +<p>In answer to this letter, another woman novelist, Miss Florence +Warden, challenged Mrs Craigie as to the existence of such women, but +elicited no further reply. <i>The Daily Mail</i> commented on it thus: +‘Hundreds of thousands of our readers can give an answer to this +remarkable statement out of their own experience, and we have little +doubt as to what the tenor of that answer will be.’ One can imagine that +this was written with a view to being read at the breakfast-tables of +Villadom; but men and women of the world, whose experience is not +confined to Villadom, nor their opinions of life coloured by the +requirements of the Young Person, will recognise the undoubted truth of +Mrs Craigie’s statements. Whilst agreeing that the state of things +between the sexes which she describes is a true one, I venture +respectfully to differ as to women’s motive for this ‘excess of +generosity.’ There +<span class = "pagenum">123</span> +is an enormous amount of wonderful unselfishness among women, but it +does not expend itself in this direction, in my opinion. Rather is the +motive a passionate desire for their own enjoyment, the gratification of +their own vanity by pleasing the opposite sex, often at the cost of +their own self-respect. H. B. Marriott-Watson takes the same view +in a subsequent letter, where he says: ‘Women’s unselfishness does not +extend to the region of love. The sex attraction is practically +inconsistent with altruism, and the measure of renunciation is inversely +the measure of affection. This is the order which Nature has +established, and it is no use trying to expel her. A woman may lay +down her life for the man she loves, but she will not surrender him to a +rival.’</p> + +<p>Another letter of interest came from Miss Helen Mathers, who stated +that ‘all women should marry, but no men!’—the advantages of the +conjugal state being, in her opinion, entirely on the woman’s side.</p> + +<p>At this point appeared Mr Meredith’s contribution to the discussion +in the less authoritative form of an interview—not a letter or +article, as, after this lapse of time, so many +<span class = "pagenum">124</span> +people seem to imagine. On re-reading this interview recently, +I was struck with Mr Meredith’s peculiarly old-fashioned ideas +about women. Where the woman question was concerned the clock of his +observation seems to have stopped many decades ago.</p> + +<p>‘The fault at the bottom of the business,’ he affirms, ‘is that women +are so uneducated, so unready. Men too often want a slave, and +frequently think they have got one, not because the woman has not often +got more sense than her husband, but because she is so inarticulate, not +educated enough to give expression to her real ideas and feelings.’</p> + +<p>This was before the vogue of the suffragettes, but it is a +sufficiently surprising statement for 1904. He continues: <ins class = +"correction" title = "printed as double quote">‘</ins>It is a question +to my mind whether a young girl, married, say, at eighteen, utterly +ignorant of life, knowing little of the man she is marrying, or of any +other man in the world at all, should be condemned to live with him for +the rest of her life. She falls out of sympathy with him, say, has no +common taste with him, nothing to share with him, no real communion +except a physical one. The life is nearly intolerable, yet many +<span class = "pagenum">125</span> +women go on with it from habit, or because the world terrorises +them.’</p> + +<p>This is true enough, but Mr Meredith speaks as if it were still the +rule, as in our grandmothers’ day, for a girl to marry in the teens, +whereas it is now quite the exception. Every year the marrying age seems +to advance, and blushing brides decked in orange blossoms are led to the +altar at an age when, fifty years ago, they would be resigned old maids +in cap and mittens. If a girl is foolish enough to marry immediately she +is out of the schoolroom, she must be prepared to take the enormous risk +which the choice of a husband at such an immature age must entail.</p> + +<p>Elsewhere Mr Meredith says: ‘Marriage is so difficult, its modern +conditions are so difficult, that when two educated people want it, +nothing should be put in their way. . . . Certainly one +day the present conditions of marriage will be changed. It will be +allowed for a certain period, say ten years, or—well, I do +not want to specify any particular period. The State will see sufficient +money is put by to provide for and educate the children. Perhaps the +State will take charge of this fund. There +<span class = "pagenum">126</span> +will be a devil of an uproar before such a change can be made. It will +be a great shock, but look back and see what shocks there have been and +what changes have nevertheless taken place in this marriage business in +the past.’</p> + +<p>‘The difficulty,’ he continues, ‘is to make English people face such +a problem. They want to live under discipline more than any other nation +in the world. They won’t look ahead, especially the governing people. +And you must have philosophy, though it is more than you can hope to get +English people to admit the bare name of philosophy into their +discussion of such a question. Again and again, notably in their +criticism of America, you see how English people will persist in +regarding any new trait as a sign of disease. Yet it is a sign of +health.’</p> + +<p>It will be seen that Mr Meredith puts forward the ten-year limit +merely as a suggestion. I recall in one of Stevenson’s essays an +allusion to a lady who said: ‘After ten years one’s husband is at least +an old friend,’ and her answer was: ‘Yes, and one would like him to be +that and nothing more.’ The decade seems to have a special significance +in marriage. +<span class = "pagenum">127</span> +After the trying first year is over, most couples settle down +comfortably enough until nearing the tenth year. The president of the +Divorce Court has called this the danger zone of married life. One of +the subsequent letters in <i>The Daily Mail</i>, approving Mr Meredith’s +suggestion, alluded to the present form of marriage as ‘the +life-sentence,’ and suggested a still shorter time limit, five years for +choice, since during that time a couple would have found happiness or +the reverse, and in the latter case ten years was too long to wait for +freedom.</p> + +<p>A writer in another paper cited America as an example of terminable +marriage in full working order. ‘It appears from the statement of an +American bishop that the people of the United States are actually living +under Mr Meredith’s conditions already. Last year (1903) as many as +600,000 American marriages were dissolved. This means that there was one +divorce to every four marriages. In some districts the proportion was +more like one to two. And the most frequent cause of divorce was a +desire for change!’</p> + +<p>It seems to me that the establishment of a leasehold marriage system +would only result +<span class = "pagenum">128</span> +in wholesale wretchedness and confusion, beside which the present sum of +marital misery would be but a drop in the ocean. If our marriage laws +must be modified, let us trust it will not be in this direction, though +it is obvious enough that such a change would come as a boon to +thousands of men and women, who from one cause or another have come to +loathe the tie that binds them. Whether it would not also disturb the +prosaic content that passes for happiness with millions more is too big +a question to be more than mentioned here.</p> + +<p>The fate of those who are tied for life to lunatics, criminals, and +drunkards is pitiable indeed, but an extension of the laws of divorce +would meet their exceptional case, without disturbing the marriage bond +of normal people. I have endeavoured to indicate some of the many +difficulties of leasehold marriage in the following dialogue.</p> + + +<span class = "pagenum">129</span> + +<h4><a name = "chapIII_II" id = "chapIII_II">II</a><br> +<span class = "subhead">LEASEHOLD MARRIAGE IN PRACTICE<br> +A DIALOGUE IN 1999</span></h4> + +<blockquote> +‘There is one thing that women dread more than celibacy—it is +repudiation.’ +<span class = "author">—Marcel Prévost.</span></blockquote> + + +<p class = "hanging"> +<i>Katharine and Margaret, both attractive women on the borderland of +forty, are lunching together. They are old friends and have not met for +years<ins class = "correction" title = ". missing">. </ins></i></p> + +<p><i>Margaret.</i> ‘How nice it is to be together again, but I’m sorry +to find you so changed; you don’t look happy, what is the trouble?’</p> + +<p><i>Katharine.</i> ‘I ought to look happy, I’ve had wonderful luck, +but the truth is, I’m utterly tired. The conditions of marriage nowadays +are horribly wearing, don’t you think?’</p> + +<p><i>M.</i> ‘Well, of course, we miss that feeling of peace and +security that our mothers talked of, but then we also miss that ghastly +monotony. Think of living year after year, thirty, forty, fifty years, +with the same +<span class = "pagenum">130</span> +man! How tired one would get of his tempers.’</p> + +<p><i>K.</i> ‘I’m not so sure of that. Monotony of tempers is better +than variety. All people have them, anyway. Besides, I’ve a notion that +our fathers were nothing like so difficult to live with as our husbands +are. You see, in the old days they knew they were fixed up for life, and +that acted as a curb. We seem to miss that curb nowadays.’</p> + +<p><i>M.</i> ‘Yes, there’s something in that. I remember my grandmother, +who was married at the end of the last century, used to say that her +husband was her Sheet Anchor, and he called her his Haven of Rest.’</p> + +<p><i>K.</i> ‘Oh, I envy them! That’s what I want so badly—a +haven, an anchor! How peaceful life must have been then before this +horrible new system came in.’</p> + +<p><i>M.</i> ‘People evidently didn’t seem to think so, or why should +they have altered it? But what’s your quarrel with the system? You’ve +had four husbands and changed the first two almost as quickly as the law +allowed.’</p> + +<p><i>K.</i> ‘Yes, and I’m only forty-one. I began too young—at +eighteen—but one naturally takes marriage lightly when one knows +it’s +<span class = "pagenum">131</span> +only for five years. One enters upon it as thoughtlessly as our happy +mothers used to start their flirtations.’</p> + +<p><i>M.</i> ‘The consequences are rather more serious though; we are +disillusioned women at the age when they were still light-hearted +girls.’</p> + +<p><i>K.</i> ‘It’s the families that make it so difficult. Fatherhood is +quite a cult nowadays. All my husbands have been of a philoprogenitive +turn, and I have eight children.’</p> + +<p><i>M.</i> ‘Eight children! No wonder you look worried.’</p> + +<p><i>K.</i> ‘Exactly! my mother would have been horrified. Two or three +was the correct number in her days, four at the utmost, and five a +fatality and very rare.’</p> + +<p><i>M.</i> ‘Well, my dear, you needn’t have had so many; you should +have curbed that cult of Fatherhood. No woman is compelled to bear +children nowadays, as our unfortunate grandmothers were. Have you got +all eight with you?’</p> + +<p><i>K.</i> ‘No, that’s just the trouble. I didn’t want to have so +many, but of course now I’ve got them I want them with me, and of course +their fathers want them too.’</p> + +<span class = "pagenum">132</span> +<p><i>M.</i> ‘Oh dear! how tiresome; that’s the worst of having children +in these times. I’m sometimes glad I have none.’</p> + +<p><i>K.</i> ‘Then perhaps you don’t know the law about the children of +our present marriage system? A sum of money has to be invested +annually for each child, in the great State Infant Trust; when the +marriage is dissolved the mother has the sole custody of them, unless +the father wishes to share it; in the latter case they spend half the +year with each parent.’</p> + +<p><i>M.</i> ‘It’s fair.’</p> + +<p><i>K.</i> ‘I suppose so, but oh! so terribly hard on a mother! My two +elder girls are almost grown up, they’ve been at a boarding school for +some time, and it was easy and natural enough for George and I to share +them in the holidays, but now, I can’t keep them at the school any +longer, and they will have to spend half the year with him. Thank +heaven, he hasn’t been married for some time, and isn’t likely to again, +so I haven’t the horror of a strange woman influencing them, but how can +I guide them? how have any real control or influence over them in such +circumstances?’</p> + +<span class = "pagenum">133</span> +<p><i>M.</i> ‘Yes, that must be very sad for you.’</p> + +<p><i>K.</i> ‘It’s awful, but there’s much worse than that. My second +husband, Gordon, the father of Arthur and Maggie, is married again, and +his wife is jealous of his eldest children, and hates the time when they +come to stay. And my little Arthur is so delicate, he requires ceaseless +care and studying—I never have a happy moment when he is with +them; he doesn’t get on well with the other children either, and always +returns from the visits looking ill and wretched. I couldn’t tell +you all I have suffered on account of Arthur! Oh! when I think of him, +I could curse this infamous marriage system—it is a sin +against nature!’</p> + +<p><i>M.</i> ‘But, my dear, it’s no use abusing the laws. Why didn’t you +stay with Gordon, or in the first instance with George? It’s often done, +even now.’</p> + +<p><i>K.</i> ‘I know, I know, but George and I were utterly +unsuited—we married as boy and girl. Under the old system prudent +parents generally intervened, and the young couple were obliged to wait +until they were sure of their own minds. But you know how things are +now; in one’s first young infatuation, +<span class = "pagenum">134</span> +one is sure of five years ahead at least, and one doesn’t need to look +beyond that.’</p> + +<p><i>M.</i> ‘Well, you were twenty-four when you married Gordon; why +didn’t you choose him more carefully?’</p> + +<p><i>K.</i> ‘That was largely “a matter of economics” as I read in an +old play called <i>Votes for Women</i>, not long ago—so quaint +their ideas were in those days!—and there was something in it too +about “twenty-four used not to be so young, but it’s become so!” Still, +I was old enough to know better, but I was light-hearted and +luxury-loving, and I couldn’t live on that pittance, which was all the +law compelled George to allow me. I don’t blame him, it was all he +could do to save the necessary tax for the children. So I married Gordon +for a home, and of course it was hateful!’</p> + +<p><i>M.</i> ‘And your third husband died?’</p> + +<p><i>K.</i> ‘Yes; the one who should have lived generally dies. +I lost him after two years only, but I can’t talk of him, dear; he +was just my Man of Men.’</p> + +<p><i>M.</i> ‘Ah! I’m glad you have had that.’</p> + +<p><i>K.</i> ‘Oh! I have been lucky with all my troubles, as I told you. +I was alone for four +<span class = "pagenum">135</span> +years after I lost my Best, and I should like to have been faithful to +him for ever. But I wasn’t strong enough; in spite of the dear children +I was very lonely, as the elder ones were always at school.’</p> + +<p><i>M.</i> ‘Yes, and one wants a man, somehow, to fuss round one.’</p> + +<p><i>K.</i> ‘True, it’s a fatal weakness. So at last I married my good +little Duncan, just for companionship. I chose <i>him</i> carefully +enough. Experience has taught me a lot, and I didn’t mean to be left in +the lurch at forty as so many are.’</p> + +<p><i>M.</i> ‘I’m glad he’s good to you. Yes; it’s fearful how many +women get left alone just when they need care and love most, when their +looks and freshness are gone, and their energy weakened. But, as you +haven’t got that to fear, why should you be so worried now?’</p> + +<p><i>K.</i> ‘It isn’t exactly that I’m worried—I’m used up! +Twenty years of uncertain domestic arrangements is enough to wear out +anyone. I’ve never been able to feel settled in any house, or let myself +get attached to a place, or plant out a garden even. One’s set of +friends is always breaking up; people never +<span class = "pagenum">136</span> +seem to buy houses and estates now, or to get rooted anywhere. In the +novels of fifty years ago, how they used to complain about being in a +groove! They little knew how miserable life could be for want of a +permanent groove.’</p> + +<p><i>M.</i> ‘I dislike monotony, but it certainly has its advantages. +You remember my first husband, Dick?—such a good-looking +boy—he was crazy about golf and outdoor games. I got quite +into his way of living, and it was a great trial when I married Cecil +Innes, who hated the open air, and cared only for books and grubbing +about in museums.’</p> + +<p><i>K.</i> ‘Why did you leave Dick?’</p> + +<p><i>M.</i> ‘I didn’t really want to, we were very comfy together, but +he fell in love with another woman. He was mad about her, and asked me +to release him. As I had no children, I thought it only fair to +agree. Cecil interested me very much at first, and he adored me, but I +had a very dreary time with him. You know I’m not a bit literary, and he +was so “precious” and bookish, he bored me to death. I was glad to +leave him for Jack, my present husband, but Cecil’s grief at parting was +so frightful I shall never +<span class = "pagenum">137</span> +forget it, and when he died soon after I felt like a murderess.’</p> + +<p><i>K.</i> ‘It must have been a painful experience, but one gets +accustomed to these tragedies, one hears of so many. There is always one +who wants to be free, and one to remain bound.’</p> + +<p><i>M.</i> ‘Yes; and the unwritten tradition that it is a matter of +honour never to seek to hold an unwilling partner quite negatives the +law that a marriage can only terminate when both parties +desire it.’</p> + +<p><i>K.</i> ‘I’m sure the tragedies of parting one hears of nowadays +are far worse than the occasional tragedies in the old days, caused by +being bound, and ever so much more frequent.’</p> + +<p><i>M.</i> ‘It wouldn’t be such an irony if <i>anyone</i> were +benefited, but as far as I can see the men suffer nearly as much as the +women, especially when they are old. According to our early century +newspapers, an old bachelor or widower could always get a young and +charming wife, but now nobody will marry an elderly man, except the old +ladies, and the men don’t want them<ins class = "correction" title = +"printed as double quote">.’ </ins></p> + +<p><i>K.</i> ‘It’s a pity they don’t, that would solve +<span class = "pagenum">138</span> +a lot of the unhappiness one sees around. It must be awful to be +deserted in one’s old age.’</p> + +<p><i>M.</i> ‘Talking about the old newspapers, it’s very amusing to +read them in the British Museum, and see what wonderful things were +expected of the leasehold marriage system when it was first legalised. +All the abuses of the old system were to disappear: divorce, adultery, +prostitution, and seduction—all the social evils were to go in one +clean sweep.’</p> + +<p><i>K.</i> ‘How absurdly shortsighted people were then. Divorce is +abolished, it’s true, but the scandals and misery, broken hearts and +broken homes that it caused are now multiplied a thousand times. +Infidelity may be less frequent, but if people have the wish and the +opportunity for it they’re not likely to wait for a certain number of +years, until it ceases to be technically a sin. The same with the other +evils. There will always be a large number of men who postpone marriage +for financial or other reasons, and a large number of women who can only +earn a living in one way—the oldest profession in the world will +always be kept going! Seduction, too, is not likely to cease as long as +the law +<span class = "pagenum">139</span> +is so lenient to it. There will always be ignorant, silly, unprotected +girls and always men to take advantage of them.’</p> + +<p><i>M.</i> ‘There seem to be just as many elderly spinsters, too, as +before; the women who don’t attract men remain the same under any +system, and often they are the best women.’</p> + +<p><i>K.</i> ‘How strange it must be <i>never to have had a +husband!</i>’</p> + +<p><i>M.</i> ‘It must be peaceful, at anyrate; but spinsters don’t look +any happier than married women.’</p> + +<p><i>K.</i> ‘I can only see one good result of the leasehold +system—that women are as anxious for motherhood now as in the +early century they were anxious to avoid it. We grow old with the fear +of almost certain desertion and loneliness before us, and the one hope +for our old age is our children——Oh! I am sorry, +I forgot you had none.’</p> + +<p><i>M.</i> ‘Never mind, I often think of it, and whenever Jack admires +or pays attention to another woman, I am in terror for fear he has +found a fresh attraction and may want to leave me. What stuff they used +to write formerly about the necessity for love being free. As if freedom +were such a glorious thing! +<span class = "pagenum">140</span> +Why, we are all slaves to some convention or passion or theory; none of +us are free, really free, and we wouldn’t like it if we were. It may be +all very well for the fantastic love of novels to be free, but that +strange <i>need of each other</i>, which we call “love” in real life, +for want of a better term—<i>that</i> must be forged into a bond, +or what help is it to us poor vacillating mortals? Love must be an +Anchor in real life—nothing else is any use!’</p> + + +<span class = "pagenum">141</span> + +<h4><a name = "chapIII_III" id = "chapIII_III">III</a><br> +<span class = "subhead">THE FIASCO OF FREE LOVE</span></h4> + +<blockquote> +‘The ultimate standards by which all men judge of behaviour is the +resulting happiness or misery.’</blockquote> + +<blockquote> +‘Conduct whose total results, immediate and remote, are injurious is bad +conduct.’ +<span class = "author">—Herbert Spencer.</span></blockquote> + + +<p><span class = "firstword">Free</span> love has been called the most +dangerous and delusive of all marriage schemes. It is based on a wholly +impossible standard of ethics. Theoretically, it is the ideal union +between the sexes, but it will only become practical when men and women +have morally advanced out of all recognition. When people are all +faithful, constant, pure-minded, and utterly unselfish, free marriage +may be worth considering. Even then, there would be no chance for the +ill-favoured and unattractive.</p> + +<p>Under present conditions no couple living <i>openly</i> in free love +is known to have made a success of it—a solid, permanent success, +that is. I believe there are couples who live happily together +without any more durable bond +<span class = "pagenum">142</span> +than their mutual affection, but they wisely assume the respectable +shelter of the wedding ring, and call themselves Mr and Mrs. Thus their +little fledgling of free love is not required to battle against the +overwhelming force of social ostracism. And moreover one has no means of +knowing how long these unions stand the supreme test of time. The two +notable modern instances of free love that naturally rise to the mind +are George Eliot and Mary Godwin. But both the men with whom they mated +were already married. As soon as Harriet was dead, Mary Godwin married +Shelley, and when George Lewes had passed away, George Eliot married +another man—an act which most people consider far less pardonable +in the circumstances than her irregular union with Lewes. Even the +famous Perfectionists of Oneida relapsed into ordinary marriage on the +death of their leader, Noyes, and by his own wish.</p> + +<p>As an institution, free love seems widely practised in the East End +of London, but judging by the evidence of the police courts its results +are certainly not encouraging. I am told that the practice is +common among the cotton operatives of Lancashire. The +<span class = "pagenum">143</span> +<i>collage</i> system is also very prevalent in France among the working +classes, and seems to answer well enough. But only when women have the +ability and the opportunity to support themselves is free marriage at +all feasible from the economic standpoint, and even then there remains +the serious question of illegitimacy. All right-minded persons must +acknowledge that the attitude of society towards the illegitimate is +unjust and cruel in the extreme, resulting as it does in punishing the +perfectly innocent. But every grown man and woman is aware of this +attitude, and those who act in defiance of it, to please themselves or +to satisfy some whim of experiment, do so in the full knowledge that on +their child will fall a certain burden of lifelong disadvantage. Many +perhaps are deterred from breaking the moral law by this knowledge, but +the number of illegitimates born in England and Wales in 1905 was +37,300; and, in the interests of these unfortunate victims of others’ +selfishness, I think it is high time a more kindly and broad-minded +attitude towards their social disability was adopted.</p> + +<p>I remember as a young girl going to see +<span class = "pagenum">144</span> +a play called <i>A Bunch of Violets</i>. The heroine discovers that her +husband’s previous wife is alive and that her child is therefore +illegitimate. She tells her daughter to choose between the parents, +explaining the worldly advantages of staying with her rich, influential +father. The harangue concludes with words to the effect: ‘With me you +will be poor and shamed, and <i>you can never marry</i>.’ Doubtless this +ridiculous point of view was adopted solely for the benefit of the young +girls in the audience, but its unreasonableness disgusted me for one. +Even to the limited intelligence of seventeen it is obvious that, since +a name is of so much importance in life, an illegitimate girl had better +marry as quickly as she possibly can, in order to obtain one!</p> + +<p>Free love has recently been much discussed in connection with +socialism, and, thanks no doubt to the misrepresentations of certain +newspapers, the idea seems to have gained ground that the abolition of +marriage and the substitution of free love was part of the socialist +programme. No more untrue charge could possibly be made, as inquiries at +the headquarters of the various socialist bodies will quickly prove.</p> + +<span class = "pagenum">145</span> +<p>The people who advocate free love are very fond of arguing that so +personal a matter only concerns themselves. All who think thus should +have had a grave warning in a recent <i>cause célèbre</i>, in which +murder, attempted suicide, permanent maiming, and a tangle of misery +involving innocent children down to the third generation, were proved to +have resulted from a ‘free’ union entered on nearly thirty years before. +This and the many other tragedies of free love, which appear in the +newspapers from time to time, seem to prove the mistake of imagining +that we are accountable to none for our actions. A relationship +which affects the future generation can never be a private and personal +matter. E. R. Chapman in a very interesting essay on marriage +published some years ago says: ‘To exchange legal marriage for mere +voluntary unions, mere temporary partnerships, would be not to set love +free, but to give love its death blow by divorcing it from that higher +human element which is the note of marriage, rightly understood, and +which places regard for order, regard for the common weal above personal +interest and the mere self-gratification of the moment.’</p> + + +<span class = "pagenum">146</span> + +<h4><a name = "chapIII_IV" id = "chapIII_IV">IV</a><br> +<span class = "subhead">POLYGAMY AT THE POLITE DINNER-TABLE</span></h4> + +<blockquote> +‘Last and hardest of all to eradicate in our midst, comes the monopoly +of the human heart which is known as marriage . . . this ugly +and barbaric form of serfdom has come in our own time by some strange +caprice to be regarded as of positively divine origin.’ +<span class = "author">—Grant Allen.</span></blockquote> + + +<p><span class = "firstword">We</span> call it the polite dinner-table, +because we never hesitate to be extremely rude to each other, when +necessary for the purposes of argument. On this particular occasion, the +inevitable marriage discussion, which is always to be found in one or +other of the newspapers, was the subject of conversation, and the Good +Stockbroker (unmarried) was vigorously defending the Holy Estate. His +moral attitude is certainly somewhat boring, but nevertheless the Good +Stockbroker is one of those people to whom one really is polite. +Although obvious irritation was visible on the face of the Family +Egotist we listened respectfully, with the exception of the +<span class = "pagenum">147</span> +Wicked Stockbroker, whose dinner was far too important in his scheme of +life to be trifled with by moral conversations.</p> + +<p>Whatever the Good Stockbroker says the Weary Roué is of course bound +to contradict as a matter of honour. I may mention that the Weary +Roué is a man of the highest virtue and a model husband and father. His +pose of evil experience has gained him his sarcastic nickname, but in no +way has he earned it by his conduct. ‘You forget,’ he interposed +languidly, when the Good Stockbroker paused, ‘that no less a philosopher +than Schopenhauer said that the natural tendency of man is towards +polygamy, and of woman towards monogamy.’</p> + +<p>‘I deny the first statement,’ said the Good Stockbroker heatedly. He +was always heated where questions of morality were concerned, and was +proceeding to give chapter and verse for what promised to become a +somewhat dull discussion when the Bluestocking firmly interposed in her +small staccato pipe:</p> + +<p>‘To hear you, one would suppose monogamic marriage was a divine +institution.’</p> + +<p>‘Absurd, isn’t it?’ grinned the Weary Roué. The Good Stockbroker +looked pained +<span class = "pagenum">148</span> +and cleared his throat. At this formidable signal, the Family +Egotist—whose irritation had been increasing like the alleged +circulation of a newspaper—showed every sign of hurling the +boomerang of his opinion into the fray. This would have meant the death +of all liveliness for some hours to come, and a general sigh had begun +to heave, when once more our brave Bluestocking stemmed the tide.</p> + +<p>‘You make rather a cult of the Bible,’ she quacked scornfully, +directing her remarks principally at the Good Stockbroker; ‘but you +don’t seem very conversant with the Old Testament. You will find there +ample proof that monogamic marriage is no more divine than—than +polygamy or free love. Nor has it any celestial origin, since it varies +with race and climate. It is simply an indispensable social +safeguard.’</p> + +<p>‘I’ll have a shilling each way on it,’ murmured the Ass (an +incorrigible youth, quite the Winston Churchill of our family cabinet), +using his customary formula. Unheeding, the Bluestocking chirruped on +severely: ‘You must know, if you have ever studied sociology, that +marriage is essentially a <i>social contract</i>, primarily based on +selfishness. At present it +<span class = "pagenum">149</span> +still retains its semi-barbarous form, and those who preach without +reason of its alleged sacredness would be better employed in suggesting +how the savage code now in vogue can be modified to meet the necessities +of modern civilisation.’</p> + +<p>She paused for breath. The Good Stockbroker was pale, but faced her +manfully. ‘Well done, Bluestocking!’ said the Weary Roué. ‘Wonderful +woman, our Quacker,’ said the Ass, ‘I’ll have a shilling each way on +her.’ The Wicked Stockbroker took a second helping of salad, and ate on +unheeding, whilst the Gentle Lady at the head of the table anxiously +watched the Family Egotist, who looked apoplectic and was toying +truculently with a wineglass with evident danger of shortening its +career of usefulness.</p> + +<p>‘I was taught,’ said the Good Stockbroker slowly, ‘to regard marriage +as a sacred institution—a holy mystery.’</p> + +<p>‘Then you were taught rot,’ snapped the Bluestocking, thus living up +to the worst traditions of the polite dinner-table, and quivering with +intellectual fury.</p> + +<p>‘Recrimination—’ began the Good Stockbroker.</p> + +<span class = "pagenum">150</span> +(‘Good word that, I’ll have a shilling each way on it,’ murmured the +Ass.) + +<p>‘—is not argument,’ continued the Good Stockbroker.</p> + +<p>‘It may not be, but what you said was <i>rot</i>,’ replied the +Bluestocking, ‘“a holy mystery, instituted in the time of man’s +innocency”—I recognise the quotation! And when was that time, +pray? Are you referring to the Garden of Eden, or to what part of the +Bible? The chosen people, the Hebrews, were polygamists from the time of +Lamech, evidently with the approval of the Deity. Even the immaculate +David had thirteen wives, and the saintly Solomon a clear thousand. Not +much of a holy mystery in those days, eh?’</p> + +<p>‘Dear Bluestocking, you really <i>are</i>—’ murmured the Gentle +Lady.</p> + +<p><ins class = "correction" title = "printed as double quote">‘</ins>Not +at all; she’s perfectly sound,’ interposed the Weary Roué, gloating with +ghoulish joy over the Good Stockbroker’s apparent discomfort.</p> + +<p>‘I give in,’ said the latter, and a yell of joy burst from the Ass +and the Weary Roué. ‘I really cannot argue against a lady of such +overwhelming eloquence,’ he continued, bowing +<span class = "pagenum">151</span> +in his delightful courtly way. ‘All the same, I shall always +believe that marriage is a holy institution.’</p> + +<p>‘My dear old chap,’ said the Weary Roué, hastily, with one eye on the +Family Egotist, who was certainly being treated badly that evening: +‘your high-mindedness is admirable, quite admirable, but it won’t work; +it doesn’t fit into modern conditions. Theoretically, Marriage is a Holy +Mystery no doubt—in practice it’s apt to be an Unholy Muddle, +sometimes a Mess. Personally I believe in polygamy.’</p> + +<p>Roars of laughter were stifled in their birth, as we thought of the +Weary Roué’s circumspect spouse, and his several circumspect children, +discreet from birth upwards.</p> + +<p>‘So do I—a shilling each way,’ said the Ass, inevitably.</p> + +<p>‘Not for myself, of course,’ continued the Weary Roué, without a +trace of a smile, ‘that is to say, not—er—not now, but +speaking for the majority and—er, in the abstract, polygamy would +be a sensible institution. Just think how it would simplify all our +modern complications, how it would mend our two worst social evils.’</p> + +<span class = "pagenum">152</span> +<p>‘Yes, <i>think</i>, please—thinking will do,’ interposed the +Gentle Lady, hastily.</p> + +<p>‘How it would solve the superfluous woman question,’ continued the +Weary Roué, enthusiastically. ‘Think of the enormous number of miserable +spinsters who would be happily provided for.’ An indignant quack came +from the Bluestocking.</p> + +<p>‘Think of the expense,’ remarked the Good Stockbroker, dryly, and the +Weary Roué collapsed like a pricked gas-bag.</p> + +<p>‘Herbert Spencer says,’ continued the Good Stockbroker, ‘that the +tendency to monogamy is innate, and all the other forms of marriage have +been temporary deviations, each bringing their own retributive evils. +After all, monogamous marriage was instituted for the protection of +women, and has been held sacred in the great and noble ages of the +world. Quite apart from the moral point of view, however, polygamy could +only be possible in a tropical climate, where the necessities of life +were reduced to a minimum, and one could live on dates and rice, but as +the average man in our glorious Free Trade country can’t afford to keep +one wife, in decent comfort, let alone several—I +<span class = "pagenum">153</span> +ask, how in the name of the bank rate—?’</p> + +<p>‘You stockbroking chaps are so devilish sordid,’ returned the Weary +Roué. ‘Didn’t I say <i>in the abstract</i>? Of course I know it wouldn’t +do practically, not yet anyway, but honestly I believe it would go far +to solve the whole sex problem.’</p> + +<p>‘You neither of you seem to take the woman into consideration at +all,’ piped the Bluestocking. ‘Do you suppose we modern women with our +resources and our education would consider such an idea for a +moment?’</p> + +<p>‘Well, what do you think?’ asked the Weary Roué, with diplomatic +deference.</p> + +<p>To our surprise the Bluestocking began to blush, and her blush is not +the coy, irresponsible flushing of an ordinary girl, but a painful rush +of blood to the face under stress of deep earnestness, the kind of blush +which forces one to look away.</p> + +<p>‘Well,’ she said, with a gulp, ‘I think, perhaps—they might.’ +It was obvious the admission had cost her something. We were all +dumfounded. The Family Egotist forgot his burning desire for speech and +ceased to threaten his wineglass; the Gentle Lady was +<span class = "pagenum">154</span> +quite excited; the Weary Roué became almost alert, and the Good +Stockbroker looked as if he were about to burst into tears.</p> + +<p>‘I think women might not be averse from polygamy—as a choice of +evils,’ continued the little Bluestocking bravely, ‘for the present +waste of womanhood in this country is a very serious evil. Of course the +financial conditions make it impossible, as the Good Stockbroker says, +but if it <i>were</i> possible, if it were instituted for highest +motives, and in an entirely honourable, open manner authorised and +sanctioned by the—er—the proper people—I think women +could concur in it without any loss of self-respect, especially if the +first ardent love of youth were over. After that, and when a woman +forgets herself, having truly found herself, in the love and care of her +children and a larger view of life and its duties—then I think +most women could be happy in such circumstances. I think a great +deal of utterly untrue stuff is talked about the agony of sexual +jealousy, and women’s jealousy especially. Men may suffer thus, +I can’t say, but I’m sure women don’t. It’s the humiliation, +the unkindness, the <i>being deceived</i> and supplanted that hurts so +when a +<span class = "pagenum">155</span> +man is unfaithful. But if it were all fair and above-board, if it were +grasped that polygamy is more suited to men’s nature, and more likely to +make for the happiness of the greatest number of women—their +numerical strength being so far in advance of men that they couldn’t +possibly expect to have a mate each—then I really think, after +women had had time to readjust their ideas to this new +condition—it may take a generation or more—I think they +would accept it gladly, and find peace and contentment in it.’</p> + +<p>The Bluestocking paused and looked round the circle of interested +faces. Even the Ass was intent on her words, but the Good Stockbroker’s +eyes were averted and the Bluestocking was quite pale as she +continued:</p> + +<p>‘Of course the word at once recalls the harem, the zenana, but +nothing of that kind would do. The wives would have to live separately, +as the Mormons do, each in her own home, with her own circle of +interests and duties, her own lifework. No one ought to live in +idleness, which is the cause of all sorts of discord and trouble. Every +woman should work at something, and to help someone. I’m not thinking +now, of +<span class = "pagenum">156</span> +course, of happily married and contented women, but of the thousands +leading miserable, dull, and lonely lives, who would be infinitely +happier if they had a certain week to look forward to, at regular +recurring intervals, when their husbands would be living with them. It +would bring love and human interest and, what is most important of all, +a <i>motive</i> into their existence. I know it sounds +dreadfully immoral,’ she went on, blushing again painfully, ‘but, oh! +I don’t mean it like <i>that</i>. After all, the chief reason why +people marry is for companionship, and it is companionship that +unmarried women, past the gaiety of first youth, chiefly lack. The +natural companion of woman is man; therefore, as there aren’t enough +husbands to go round, it follows that one might do worse than share +them. I don’t say it would be as satisfactory as having a devoted +husband all to oneself, but it might be for the greatest good of the +greatest number, and it would surely solve to a certain extent +the—the social evils.’</p> + +<p>They all clapped when she had finished somewhat breathlessly. It was +obvious that the brave Bluestocking so far lacked the +<span class = "pagenum">157</span> +courage of her opinions as to be agonisingly embarrassed at this public +expression of them. The Gentle Lady, who is the most tactful creature in +existence, accordingly rose before anyone had time to speak, and the two +women left the room together.</p> + +<p>A babble of talk arose from the men, under cover of which the Good +Stockbroker also slipped quietly away.</p> + +<p>‘Pass the port,’ said the Wicked Stockbroker, briskly. ‘She’s a +deuced bright little woman, but how even the brainy ones can be so +ignorant of life beats me, and how you chaps can be such +hypocrites. . . . !’</p> + +<p>‘Hypocrites! what d’you mean?’ blustered the Family Egotist, who was +by now almost bursting with suppressed talk.</p> + +<p>‘Not you, old chap, but the Weary Roué and the Good Stockbroker, +jawing away as if they really thought monogamy was in the majority in +this country, and polygamy was something new! Of course one expects it +from the G. S., but you, W. R., really ought to know +better—by the way, where is the G. S?’</p> + +<p>‘I think he must have gone to propose to the Bluestocking—to +save her from polygamy +<span class = "pagenum">158</span> +and her own opinions,’ drawled the Weary Roué, lighting his +cigarette.</p> + +<p>‘Stout fella! I believe he has!’ cried the Ass, excitedly. ‘I’ll have +a shilling each way on it with any of you—I mean it, really!’</p> + +<p>‘Oh! what if he has?’ said the Family Egotist, irritably. ‘What does +one fool more in the world matter? Do stop rotting, you fellows, and +pass the port.’</p> + + +<span class = "pagenum">159</span> + +<h4><a name = "chapIII_V" id = "chapIII_V">V</a><br> +<span class = "subhead">IS LEGALISED POLYANDRY THE SOLUTION?</span></h4> + + +<p><span class = "firstword">In</span> Mr W. Somerset Maugham’s very +interesting psychological study, <i>Mrs Craddock</i>, he makes one of +his characters say: ‘The fact is that few women can be happy with only +one husband. I believe that the only solution of the marriage +question is legalised polyandry.’</p> + +<p>This is the kind of statement which it is only respectable to receive +with horror, but if the secrets of feminine hearts could be known it +might prove that a goodly amount of this horror is assumed. +I decline to commit my sex either way. Mr Maugham is evidently a +gentleman very deeply experienced in feminine hearts, and I daresay he +knows what he is talking of. He is, moreover, safely unmarried, but even +he entrenches himself behind one of the characters in his novel, and who +am I that a greater courage should be expected of me?</p> + +<span class = "pagenum">160</span> +<p>There is, of course, a marvellous virtue in the word ‘legalised.’ The +most unholy and horrible marriages between fair young girls and rich or +titled dotards, drunkards, or <i>cretins</i> are considered perfectly +proper and respectable because ‘legalised.’ Yet the people who +countenance these abominations would probably be unutterably shocked by +the very whisper of polyandry—an infinitely more decent relation, +because regulated by honest sex attraction, and free presumably from +mercenary considerations. But whether legalised polyandry is <span class += "smallroman">THE</span> solution to the marriage question or not, it +is clearly an impossible one for women-ridden England, and though of +late years women have made startling strides, and shown themselves +possessed of unsuspected vitality, it seems unlikely that their +superfluous energies will be expended in this direction.</p> + + +<span class = "pagenum">161</span> + +<h4><a name = "chapIII_VI" id = "chapIII_VI">VI</a><br> +<span class = "subhead">A WORD FOR DUOGAMY</span></h4> + +<blockquote> +‘God made you, but you marry yourself.’ +<span class = "author">—R. L. Stevenson.</span></blockquote> + + +<p><span class = "firstword">The</span> day after the polite +dinner-party, Isolda, Miranda, and Amoret came in to tea, and I retailed +to them the discussion of the previous evening on polygamy.</p> + +<p>‘I see the Bluestocking’s point,’ said Isolda, thoughtfully: +‘polygamy might be acceptable to the superfluous woman who can’t marry +under present conditions—the discontented spinster to whom the +single state is so detestable that even polygamy would be +preferable—but it would never be acceptable to the woman who can +and does marry.’</p> + +<p>‘Yet how many married women put up with it nowadays?’ said Miranda; +‘aren’t there ever so many wives who condone their husband’s infidelity, +and endure it as best they can, for the sake of the children, or for +social reasons, or because they’re sufficiently attached +<span class = "pagenum">162</span> +to the man to prefer a share of him to life alone without him? And what +is that but countenancing polygyny?’</p> + +<p>‘Ah! but then the other women are only mistresses,’ exclaimed Isolda. +‘One might tolerate that unwillingly, but another legal wife, with +rights equal to one’s own or, worse, with children to compete with one’s +own—never!’</p> + +<p>‘Well, perhaps not,’ agreed Miranda; ‘I suppose a legal and permanent +rival would be somewhat different, but, after all, it’s only the middle +class in England who can be termed strictly monogamous—the upper +and lowest are as polygynous as can be. It’s only our British hypocrisy +that makes us pretend monogamy is our rule!’</p> + +<p>‘Don’t quarrel with British hypocrisy,’ said Amoret, lazily, ‘it’s +our most valuable national asset. Hypocrisy simply holds the fabric of +society together.’</p> + +<p>‘Agreed,’ said Isolda, ‘we must pretend to believe monogamy is the +rule, for peace sake, and for the ideal’s sake. Of course everybody +knows there are plenty of polygynous husbands about, and, for the matter +of that, polyandrous wives, but hypocrisy is +<span class = "pagenum">163</span> +a great aid to decency, and a nation must have decency of <i>theory</i> +at least, if not of practice, or we +should—er—h’m—decline like the Romans.’</p> + +<p>‘I was waiting for one of you to mention the Romans,’ interposed +Amoret, who for all her frivolity has a certain humorous shrewdness of +her own. ‘It’s an invariable feature of all discussions on marriage. +Directly one so much as breathes a suggestion that the marriage tie +should be made more flexible to suit modern conditions, everyone +present, except the unhappily married, pulls a long face and quotes the +awful example of the Romans. Now I’ve got a gorgeous idea for solving +the marriage problem.’</p> + +<p>‘Tell us,’ cried three voices in unison.</p> + +<p>‘Not yet, let’s get rid of the Romans first. I confided my idea to a +man the other day, and when he had floored me with the Romans as usual, +I went and looked up Gibbon.’</p> + +<p>Laughter interrupted her: the idea of our butterfly Amoret poring +over Gibbon.</p> + +<p>‘Yes, I did,’ she continued, ‘and, as far as I could make out, it +wasn’t their easy ideas about marriage that caused their decline, but +<span class = "pagenum">164</span> +their—what shall I say?—their general moral +slackness. . . .’</p> + +<p>‘I know,’ said Isolda, coming to the rescue. ‘I was reading a +frightfully interesting book about it the other day, <i>Imperial +Purple</i>. It was the relaxing of all ideals, the giving way entirely +to carnal appetites, the utter lack of moral backbone consequent on +excess of luxury and prosperity that smashed up the Romans. But if a +strenuous, cold-blooded nation like ourselves chose to relax the +stringent conditions of marriage, and kept strictly to the innovation, +well, it’s absurd to say all our ideals would deteriorate and the Empire +collapse in consequence!’</p> + +<p>‘Hear, hear! Worthy of the Bluestocking herself!’</p> + +<p>‘Very well,’ said Miranda. ‘I’ll give in about the Romans if you +like, just so as to get on with the conversation. Now let’s have your +gorgeous idea, Amoret.’</p> + +<p>‘It’s just this,’ said Amoret. ‘<i>Duogamy.</i>’</p> + +<p>‘<i>Duo</i>—two<ins class = "correction" title = +"printed as double quote">?’ </ins></p> + +<p>‘Exactly—two partners apiece. We’re all so complex nowadays +that one can’t possibly satisfy us. Two would just do it. Two would +serve to relax the tension of married +<span class = "pagenum">165</span> +life, and yet would not lead to what the newspapers call licence. +Everyone would have another chance, and what the first partner lacked +would be supplied by the second.’</p> + +<p>‘It’s not such a bad idea,’ said Isolda, musingly. ‘Launcelot could +choose a good walker and bridge player for his alternative wife, and I’d +try to find a man who hated cards and never walked a step when he could +possibly ride.’</p> + +<p>‘I think it’s a grand idea,’ cried Miranda, enthusiastically. +‘Lysander could find a woman who’d play his accompaniments and love +musical comedies, and I’d look out for a man who made a cult of the +higher drama and had two permanent stalls at the Vedrenne-Barker +Theatre.’</p> + +<p>‘It would simply solve everything,’ cried Amoret, ecstatically. +‘Whenever Theodore was disagreeable, off I’d go to my other +one—and yet without feeling I was neglecting him, as he could go +to <i>his</i> other one. She would probably be a worthy, stolid, +stayless lady with none of my faults, and when he was fed up with her +stolid staylessness he could come back to me, and my very faults, +<span class = "pagenum">166</span> +you see, would be pleasing to him by reason of their contrast to hers, +and <i>vice versa</i>.’</p> + +<p>‘It’s really a wonderful idea,’ said Isolda, thoughtfully, +‘I wonder no one thought of it before. There would be fewer old +maids, as men wouldn’t be so terribly shy of matrimony when they knew +there would always be that second chance. They wouldn’t expect so much +from one wife as they do now. And think what a good effect it would have +on our manners, too—how kind and polite and self-controlled we +would be, under fear of being compared unfavourably with the other +one.’</p> + +<p>‘Yes, it would certainly keep us all up to the mark,’ reflected +Miranda, ‘slovenly wives would make an effort to be smart, and shrewish +ones would put a curb on their tongues. Husbands would be quite +loverlike and attentive, in their anxiety to outdo the other +fellow.’</p> + +<p>‘It would smooth out the tangles all round,’ declared Amoret; ‘now +just take the cases known to us personally. The Fred Smiths, for +instance, haven’t spoken to each other for three years, just because +Fred fell in love with Miss Brown and spends +<span class = "pagenum">167</span> +nearly all his time with her. Mrs Smith is broken-hearted, Fred looks +miserable enough—a home where no one speaks to you must be simply +Hades—and the Brown girl is always threatening to commit suicide. +The affair has quite spoilt her life, and it must be very hard luck on +the Smith children, growing up in such an atmosphere. My plan would have +done away with all this misery: Fred could have married Miss Brown, and +gone on living happily at intervals with Mrs Smith.’</p> + +<p>‘But what would Mrs Smith do in the intervals? She happens to have +found no counter attraction.’</p> + +<p>‘Well, perhaps if duogamy had been the custom, she would have looked +out for one,’ said Amoret, ‘most married women could find one +alternative, I’m sure. But, any way, no plan is perfect, and there are +lots of wives who wouldn’t want a second husband at all, and who would +be only too glad of a restful period, when no dinners need be ordered. +Then take the case of the Robinsons: Dick Jones adores Mrs Robinson and +is utterly wretched because he can only be a friend to her. She is very +fond of him, and fond +<span class = "pagenum">168</span> +of her husband too; she could make them both very happy if they would +share her.’</p> + +<p>‘I have often felt I could make two men happy,’ said Isolda. ‘Some of +my best points are wasted on Launcelot. Then, too, he never tires of the +country and his beloved golf, but I do, and when one of my fits of +London-longing were to come over me I’d just run up to town and have a +ripping time with my London husband.’</p> + +<p>‘Without feeling you were doing anything wrong,’ supplemented Amoret, +whose apparent experience of the qualms of conscience struck me as being +rather suspicious.</p> + +<p>‘It’s no good, girls,’ said Miranda, suddenly. ‘It’s no +good—duogamy’s off! Think of the servants!’</p> + +<p>‘Horrors, the servants!’ said Isolda, blankly.</p> + +<p>‘Yes, I was afraid you would soon find out the one weak spot,’ said +Amoret, regretfully. ‘Of course it would be awful having to cope with +two lots of servants. One husband could afford to keep four or five, +say, and the other only one or two, and each lot would get out of hand +during the wife’s absence.’</p> + +<p>‘So instead of having a perfectly deevy time +<span class = "pagenum">169</span> +with two husbands vying with each other in pleasing one, one would have +a fearsome existence constantly breaking-in minions. Directly one had +got A.’s servants into order, it would be time to go back to B. and +do the same there.’</p> + +<p>‘No; thank you,’ said Isolda, firmly, ‘one lot is enough for me. I’ve +said dozens of times, for the servant reason alone, that I wish I had +never married. It would be madness to actually double one’s burden. You +can strike me off the list of duogamists, Amoret, until the Servant +Question is solved by some new invention of machinery, or the +importation of Chinese.’</p> + +<p>‘Perhaps,’ Amoret suggested hopefully, ‘your alternative might +consent to live in a hotel.’</p> + +<p>‘No such luck,’ said Isolda, mournfully, ‘when a man marries it’s +mostly for a home—why else should he marry unless it’s for the +children? Good gracious! I’d forgotten all about the children. Of course +that settles it.’</p> + +<p>‘The <i>cul-de-sac</i> of all reforms!’ said Amoret, tragically. +‘It’s impossible to suggest any revision in the marriage system that +isn’t +<span class = "pagenum">170</span> +instantly quashed by the children complication.’</p> + +<p>We all sat silent, busy with our thoughts, and then Isolda +shuddered.</p> + +<p>‘Duogamy’s no good,’ she said emphatically, ‘and I <i>am</i> so +disappointed!’</p> + + +<span class = "pagenum">171</span> + +<h4><a name = "chapIII_VII" id = "chapIII_VII">VII</a><br> +<span class = "subhead">THE ADVANTAGES OF THE PRELIMINARY<br> +CANTER</span></h4> + +<blockquote> +‘Marriage is terrifying, but so is a cold and forlorn old age.’ +<span class = "author">—R. L. Stevenson.</span></blockquote> + + +<p><span class = "firstword">Of</span> all the revolutionary suggestions +for improving the present marriage system, the most sensible and +feasible seems to me marriage ‘on approval’—in other words, +a ‘preliminary canter.’ The procedure would be somewhat as follows: +a couple on deciding to marry would go through a legal form of +contract, agreeing to take each other as husband and wife for a limited +term of years—say three. This period would allow two years for a +fair trial, after the abnormal and exceptionally trying first year was +over. Any shorter time would be insufficient. At the conclusion of the +three years, the contracting parties would have the option of dissolving +the marriage—the dissolution not to become absolute for another +six months, so +<span class = "pagenum">172</span> +as to allow every opportunity of testing the genuineness of the desire +to part. If no dissolution were desired, the marriage would then be +ratified by a religious or final legal ceremony, and become permanently +binding.</p> + +<p>In the case of a marriage dissolved, each party would be free to wed +again; but the second essay must be final and permanent from the start. +This restriction would be absolutely necessary if the preliminary canter +plan is not to degenerate into a species of legalised free love, as +there are many men, and some women, who would ‘always go on cantering,’ +as Amoret expressed it once—and the upshot would be nothing less +than leasehold marriage for the short term of three years.</p> + +<p>It might be urged against this plan that many couples who come to +grief in the danger zone of married life—<i>i.e.</i> nearing the +tenth year—are perfectly happy in the early years. But human love +being as mutable as it is, and people and conditions being so liable to +change, it is impossible to arrive at any permanent marriage system +which allows for this. It must, however, be remembered that, in the +majority of unhappy unions, it is +<span class = "pagenum">173</span> +not the system, but the individuals who are to blame. The institution of +the conjugal novitiate would, however, reduce the number of divorces +considerably, by making less possible the miserable misfits in +temperament now so prevalent. It would give a second chance to those who +had made a mistake, yet without resulting in that promiscuity of +intercourse which is a danger to society and fatal to the best interests +of the race. Of what other scheme can the same be said?</p> + +<p>For married women in the novitiate period a new prefix would have to +be invented, which they would retain if the union were dissolved. +<i>Mrs</i> would be the distinguishing prefix of women who had entered +on the final and permanent state of matrimony. Whether the wife would +take the husband’s surname during the probationary term would be another +question for decision by the majority; I should incline to her +retaining her maiden name with the aforesaid prefix, and only assuming +that of the husband with the Mrs of finality. But these are mere +details.</p> + +<p>As regards the important question of the +<span class = "pagenum">174</span> +children, the issue of a probationary union would, of course, be +legitimate, but I think wise people would see to it that no children +were born to them until the marriage had been finally ratified. +Certainly children would be the exception rather than the rule, but the +question of their custody in the case of dissolved marriages would be +one requiring the most thoughtful legislation. To divide the child’s +time between the parents is an undesirable expedient, and one that must +to a certain extent be harmful, since a settled existence and routine is +so essential for children’s well-being. Yet to deprive the father of +them altogether is equally undesirable.</p> + +<p>The conjugal novitiate is not a new scheme. It was practised prior to +the Reformation in Scotland under the name of ‘hand-fasting.’ The +parties met at the annual fairs, and by the ceremony of joining hands +declared themselves man and wife for a year. On the anniversary of this +function they were legally married by a priest—if all had gone +well with them. If they had found the union a failure they parted.</p> + + +<div class = "page"> + +<span class = "pagenum">175</span> + +<h3><a name = "part_IV" id = "part_IV"> +PART IV</a><br> +<span class = "subhead">CHILDREN—THE <i>CUL-DE-SAC</i> OF ALL<br> +REFORMS</span></h3> + +<p>‘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.’ +<span class = "author">—Henry Drummond.</span></p> + +<p>‘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.’ +<span class = "author">—Grant Allen.</span></p> + +<p>‘Children are a man’s power and his honour.’ +<span class = "author">—Hobbes.</span></p> + +</div> + + +<!-- 176 --> + +<span class = "pagenum">177</span> + +<h4><a name = "chapIV_I" id = "chapIV_I">I</a><br> +<span class = "subhead">TO BEGET OR NOT TO BEGET—THE QUESTION<br> +OF THE DAY</span></h4> + +<blockquote> +‘Marriage is therefore rooted in family rather than family in marriage.’ +<span class = "author">—Westermarck.</span></blockquote> + + +<p><span class = "firstword">If</span> we could leave children out of +the question, the readjustment of the conjugal conditions would be +simple enough. But Amoret has truly called this problem ‘the +<i>cul-de-sac</i> of 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 course +<span class = "pagenum">178</span> +unknown to them. Nowadays all this is changed, and the doctrines of +Malthus obtain everywhere.</p> + +<p>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 rather +<i>would</i> make them more feasible if the ‘discovery’ were universally +put into practice.</p> + +<p>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 +‘<i>cul-de-sac</i> of all reforms,’ and remain childless.</p> + +<p>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 young +<span class = "pagenum">179</span> +woman 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, <i>The Confessions of a Young Man</i> says: ‘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!)</p> + +<p>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 me +<span class = "pagenum">180</span> +that 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.</p> + +<p>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 their +<span class = "pagenum">181</span> +craze 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.</p> + +<p>‘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 course +<span class = "pagenum">182</span> +would not have found favour with our hostess, I had to content +myself with merely being rather rude to them.</p> + +<p>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 detest +<span class = "pagenum">183</span> +children, 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?</p> + +<p>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.</p> + + +<span class = "pagenum">184</span> + +<h4><a name = "chapIV_II" id = "chapIV_II">II</a><br> +<span class = "subhead">THE PROS AND CONS OF THE LIMITED<br> +FAMILY</span></h4> + +<blockquote> +‘The child—Heaven’s gift.’ +<span class = "author">—Tennyson.</span></blockquote> + + +<p><span class = "firstword">On</span> the 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 it <i>is</i> a 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—we +<span class = "pagenum">185</span> +miss 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.</p> + +<p>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 in <i>The American Journal of Sociology</i> that +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,’ +<span class = "pagenum">186</span> +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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Father Vaughan also says that this disinclination to multiply means +‘the extinction +<span class = "pagenum">187</span> +of 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 have +<i>any</i> children, he would have found many adherents, but he +alienates our sympathy by the very excess of his denunciation. He +<span class = "pagenum">188</span> +even 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 in <i>The +Merry-Go-Round</i>: ‘In this world it is the good people who do all the +harm.’</p> + +<p>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 in <i>The Fortnightly Review</i>, +contending that small families were a sign of progress rather than of +retrogression. This article was recently republished in a book entitled +<i>Population and Progress</i>. There are many other books on the +subject, +<span class = "pagenum">189</span> +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 entitled <i>The Decline of the Birth Rate</i>, +published by the Fabian Society at 1d.</p> + +<p class = "space"> +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, and +<span class = "pagenum">190</span> +infinitely 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.</p> + +<p>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 and +<span class = "pagenum">191</span> +undutiful, and in that sad day they will have no other children to +turn to.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>‘To start the nursery again,’ with all its complicated machinery, +when the sole hope +<span class = "pagenum">192</span> +has 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!</p> + + +<span class = "pagenum">193</span> + +<h4><a name = "chapIV_III" id = "chapIV_III">III</a><br> +<span class = "subhead">PARENTHOOD: THE HIGHEST DESTINY</span></h4> + +<div class = "verse"> +<p>‘O happy husband! happy wife!</p> +<p> The rarest blessing Heaven drops down</p> +<p> The sweetest treasure in spring’s crown,</p> +<p> Starts in the furrow of your life.’</p> +<p class = "right"> +—<span class = "smallcaps">Gerald Massey.</span></p> +</div> + +<p><span class = "firstword">Perhaps</span> I 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.</p> + +<p>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 +own +<span class = "pagenum">194</span> +convenience, 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, <i>apart from parenthood</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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 consequently +<span class = "pagenum">195</span> +a 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.’<a class = "tag" name = "tag5" id = "tag5" href = +"#note5">5</a></p> + +<p>It has been truly said that children are the +<span class = "pagenum">196</span> +wealth 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?</p> + +<p>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, +<span class = "pagenum">197</span> +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!</p> + +<p>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!</p> + +<p>‘Only when we become fathers and mothers +<span class = "pagenum">198</span> +do 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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, and +<span class = "pagenum">199</span> +he 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.</p> + +<p>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’ <i>Marpessa</i>. +When the maid Marpessa rejects the god in favour +<span class = "pagenum">200</span> +of the humble mortal lover, of the latter she says:</p> + +<div class = "verse"> +<p>‘And he shall give me passionate children, not</p> +<p> Some radiant god that will despise me quite,</p> +<p> But clamouring limbs, and little hearts that err.’</p> +</div> + +<p>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—<i>to be +outgrown</i>.</p> + + +<div class = "page"> + +<span class = "pagenum">201</span> + +<h3><a name = "part_V" id = "part_V"> +PART V</a><br> +<span class = "subhead">HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED</span></h3> + +<p>‘To dwell happily together they should be versed in the niceties of +the heart and born with a faculty for willing compromise.’</p> + +<p>‘Goodness in marriage is a more intricate problem than mere single +virtue, for in marriage there are two ideals to be realised.’ +<span class = "author">—R. L. Stevenson.</span></p> + +</div> + + +<!-- 202 --> + +<span class = "pagenum">203</span> + +<h4><a name = "chapV_I" id = "chapV_I">I</a><br> +<span class = "subhead">A FEW SUGGESTIONS FOR REFORM</span></h4> + + +<p><span class = "firstword">Within</span> the 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<span class = "pagenum">204</span> +<p>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 +proceedings <i>in forma pauperis</i>) can afford it.</p> + +<p class = "space"> +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 would +<span class = "pagenum">205</span> +require 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>England is almost the only European country where no attempt is made +to provide a dowry for the daughters, except +<span class = "pagenum">206</span> +among 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.</p> + +<p>I feel sure that if <i>dots</i> for 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!</p> + +<p>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 that +<span class = "pagenum">207</span> +there 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.</p> + +<p>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? This +<span class = "pagenum">208</span> +special 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>i.e.</i> ‘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 my <i>wife</i>, promising, through divine assistance, +to be unto <i>her</i> a loving and faithful <i>husband</i>, 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.</p> + + +<span class = "pagenum">209</span> + +<h4><a name = "chapV_II" id = "chapV_II">II</a><br> +<span class = "subhead">SOME PRACTICAL ADVICE TO HUSBANDS AND +WIVES</span></h4> + +<blockquote> +‘One doesn’t want a lot of fine sentiments in married life—they +don’t work.’ +<span class = "author">—W. Somerset +Maugham.</span></blockquote> + + +<p><span class = "firstword">The</span> most 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 your +<span class = "pagenum">210</span> +life’s partner. More marriages have been ruined by one expecting too +much of the other than by any vice or failing.</p> + +<p>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, never <i>never</i> marry 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.</p> + +<p class = "space"> +‘There is always one who loves and one who is beloved.’ If you find you +are the one who loves, remember—<i>it is the better part</i>, +<span class = "pagenum">211</span> +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, +<span class = "pagenum">212</span> +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 of <i>The Truth about Man</i> advises 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.</p> + +<p class = "space"> +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 of +<span class = "pagenum">213</span> +our 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 an <ins class = "correction" title = +"text reads ‘exaggerately’">exaggeratedly</ins> +gentle voice always shames the shouter of either sex into silence.</p> + +<p>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 couple <i>being rude</i> to 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 reality +<span class = "pagenum">214</span> +devoted 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?</p> + +<p>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 excellent +<span class = "pagenum">215</span> +effect 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.)</p> + +<p>Nicolette heaved a sigh of relief as the front door shut for the last +time, and turned with sparkling eyes to Pelleas.</p> + +<span class = "pagenum">216</span> +<p>‘<i>Hasn’t</i> it been a success?’ she said enthusiastically.</p> + +<p>‘Not bad,’ said Pelleas.</p> + +<p>‘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.</p> + +<p>‘Pooh! d’you call cutting up a few cakes work?’ was the answer.</p> + +<p>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 really <i>did</i> think. 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!</p> + +<p>The second instance was when I had been trying to reconcile Geraint +and his wife. I was always very fond of dear old Geraint, +<span class = "pagenum">217</span> +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. . . .’</p> + +<p>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 the <i>menu</i> is exceptional he says: “This +extravagance will ruin me,” +<span class = "pagenum">218</span> +and when it’s ordinary he asks: “Is that all?”’</p> + +<p class = "space"> +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.</p> + +<p>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, it +<span class = "pagenum">219</span> +must 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.</p> + +<p>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 house +<span class = "pagenum">220</span> +while 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 desirable +<span class = "pagenum">221</span> +from the wifely point of view. Even so, the club is a blessing, for at +least a woman can <i>hope</i> and try to believe her husband <i>is</i> +really 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.</p> + +<p>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. In +<span class = "pagenum">222</span> +any 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p class = "space"> +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 who <i>will</i> read it—I +propose therefore to enlarge somewhat on this theme for the benefit of +the uninitiated majority. A great many men would never dream of +<span class = "pagenum">223</span> +allowing 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.</p> + +<p>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 like +<span class = "pagenum">224</span> +having 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 that <i>he</i> had 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.’</p> + +<p>Which testimony speaks for itself.</p> + +<span class = "pagenum">225</span> +<p>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.</p> + +<p class = "space"> +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 conjugal +<span class = "pagenum">226</span> +conflict. 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.</p> + +<p>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 the <i>ménage</i> as was possible, +even to the extent of looking over the tradesmen’s books. Of course he +did not understand their <ins class = "correction" title = +"text reads ‘crytic’">cryptic</ins> symbols 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 he +<span class = "pagenum">227</span> +would turn for enlightenment to his wife, who happily possessed a very +robust sense of humour.</p> + +<p>‘What’s this, Valeria, “3 m’lade, 11½d.”?’</p> + +<p>‘Three pounds of marmalade, dear, it’s cheap enough, surely.’</p> + +<p>‘Too cheap to be good, I’m sure, you’d better get a superior +quality.’</p> + +<p>‘But, my dear boy, it <i>is</i> the best!’</p> + +<p>‘Oh!’ Slightly discomfited Hildebrand would resume his study of the +grocer’s hieroglyphics and presently a deep sigh would burst forth from +him.</p> + +<p>‘What’s the matter, darling? Are those wretched accounts annoying +you?’ Valeria would ask sympathetically, suppressing her desire to +laugh.</p> + +<p>‘These fellows keep their books so deucedly queerly. What does this +mean “1 primrose, 7½d., and 12 foreign safety, 1½d.”?’</p> + +<p>‘One pound of Primrose candles and a dozen boxes of matches; we must +have them, and it’s only 9d. anyway.’</p> + +<p>‘That’s not the point. What’s this, “2 sunlight, 1s. 2d.”?’</p> + +<p>‘Two boxes of Sunlight Soap for cook—it’ll last ages<ins class += "correction" title = ". missing">.’ </ins></p> + +<span class = "pagenum">228</span> +<p>‘And this, “one brooks, 3d.”?’</p> + +<p>‘Why, Brookes’ Soap, of course.’</p> + +<p>‘Is that what we use? . . . Really I don’t see anything to +laugh at.’</p> + +<p>‘Excuse me, dear, I really couldn’t help it, the idea of <i>us</i> +washing with Monkey Brand is too excruciatingly funny. Of course it’s +for the pots and pans and sinks!’</p> + +<p>‘You seem to use a great deal of soap in the house.’</p> + +<p>‘No, dear, quite a little, as any <i>housekeeper</i> would 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?’</p> + +<p>In the end he was compelled to, but few wives would have shown +Valeria’s patience under this very unnecessary infliction.</p> + +<p>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 am +<span class = "pagenum">229</span> +now 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 ever +<span class = "pagenum">230</span> +since, 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.</p> + +<p>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 behalf +<span class = "pagenum">231</span> +of 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.</p> + +<p class = "space"> +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, and <i>never</i> cry.</p> + +<p>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; be +<span class = "pagenum">232</span> +reasonable about money even if you cannot be generous, and be not +overfond of your own voice.</p> + +<p>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, <i>The Anatomy +of Melancholy</i>. ‘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!’</p> + +<p> <br> </p> + +<h6>THE END</h6> + +<p> <br> </p> + +<p class = "center smallest"> +COLSTONS LIMITED, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.</p> + +<div class = "footnote"> + +<p><a name = "note1" id = "note1" href = "#tag1">1.</a> +Augusta Webster.</p> + +<p><a name = "note2" id = "note2" href = "#tag2">2.</a> +Schopenhauer’s <i>Metaphysics of Love</i>.</p> + +<p><a name = "note3" id = "note3" href = "#tag3">3.</a> +In 1903 one tenth of all the children born in France were illegitimate. +In Paris alone the percentage was higher still—about one in every +four.</p> + +<p><a name = "note4" id = "note4" href = "#tag4">4.</a> +Schopenhauer’s <i>Metaphysics of Love</i>.</p> + +<p><a name = "note5" id = "note5" href = "#tag5">5.</a> +W. T. Stead, <i>Review of Reviews</i>, January 1908.</p> + +</div> + +</div> +<!-- end div maintext --> + +<div class = "endnote"> + +<h5><a name = "cover" id = "cover"><b>Book Cover</b></a></h5> + +<p>This book was available only as monochrome scans, so it is not known +whether the cover was originally in color. Complete cover, showing text +layout:</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<img src = "images/coverthumb.png" width = "321" height = "473" +alt = "thumbnail of complete cover"></p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>A German translation was published in 1911. The cover is shown here +for its entertainment value:</p> + +<p class = "illustration"> +<img src = "images/germanthumb.jpg" width = "165" height = "251" +alt = "Die Moderne Ehe"></p> + +</div> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Modern marriage and how to bear it, by +Maud Churton Braby + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODERN MARRIAGE AND HOW TO BEAR IT *** + +***** This file should be named 31529-h.htm or 31529-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/5/2/31529/ + +Produced by Louise Hope, Norbert H. 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