There is a story told of a rustic swain who, when asked whether he would take his partner to be his wedded wife, replied, with shameful indecision, "Yes, I"m willin"; but I"d a much sight rather have her sister." The sort of people who are represented by this vacillating bridegroom are no sooner married than they begin to cast fond, lingering looks behind upon the state of single blessedness they have abandoned, or else upon some lost ideal which they prefer to the living, breathing reality of which they have become possessed. They don"t know, and never did know, their own minds.
Let us suppose, however, that a bad matrimonial bargain has been obtained, not in imagination, but in sad earnest--How is the best to be made of it? We must do as Old Mother Hubbard did when she found the cupboard empty--"accept the inevitable with calm steadfastness." It may even be politic to dissemble a little, and pretend we rather enjoy it than otherwise. Above all, do not appeal to the girl"s friends for comfort or consolation. They will only laugh at you. Take warning from the unfortunate young man who, every time he met the father of his wife, complained to him of the bad temper and disposition of his daughter. At last, upon one occasion, the old gentleman, becoming weary of the grumbling of his son-in-law, exclaimed: "You are right, sir; she is an impertinent jade; and if I hear any more complaints of her I will disinherit her."
A writer in _Chambers" Journal_ gives some instances of matrimonial tribulation that were brought to light in the last census returns.
Several husbands returned their wives as the heads of the families; and one described himself as an idiot for having married his literal better-half. "Married, and I"m heartily sorry for it," was returned in two cases; and in quite a number of instances "Temper" was entered under the head of infirmities opposite the name of the wife.
Confessions of this sort, besides being, as we have already hinted, somewhat indiscreet, are often also supererogatory; for conjugal dissension, like murder, will out; and that sometimes in the most provoking and untimely manner. It would be much better to call in the a.s.sistance of proper pride than to whine in this cowardly fashion. "We mortals," says George Eliot, "men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, "Oh, nothing!" Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts--not to hurt others." "To feel the chains, but take especial care the world shall not hear them clank. "Tis a prudence that often pa.s.ses for happiness. It is one of the decencies of matrimony."
"Biddy," said Dean Swift one day to his cook, "this leg of mutton is over-done; take it down and do it less." "Plaze, your Riverence,"
replied Biddy, "the thing is impossible." "Well, then," rejoined her master, "let this be a lesson to you, that if you must commit mistakes they, at all events, shall not be of such gravity as to preclude correction." Well would it be if people never made mistakes that preclude correction in reference to more important matters! Yet, for all this, it is a good thing that we have no "fatal facility" of divorce in this country, and that a marriage once made is generally regarded as a world-without-end bargain.
A story has been told of a graceless scamp who gained access to the Clarendon printing-office in Oxford, when a new edition of the Prayer-book was ready for the press. In that part of the "forme" already set up which contained the marriage service, he subst.i.tuted the letter _k_ for the letter _v_ in the word live; and thus the vow "to love, honour, comfort, &c., so long as ye both shall live," was made to read "so long as ye both shall like!" The change was not discovered until the whole of the edition was printed off. If the sheets are still preserved it would be a good speculation to send them to some of the States in America, where people are "exceedingly divorced." May they long remain useless in Great Britain! For nothing is more dangerous than to unite two persons so closely in all their interests and concerns as man and wife, without rendering the union entire and total.
In that very interesting Bible story of Nabal and Abigail, a n.o.ble woman is seen making the best of an extremely bad matrimonial bargain. If her marriage with Nabal, who was a churlish, ill-tempered, drunken fool, was one of the worst possible, does not her conduct teach the lesson that something may be done to mitigate the miseries of even the most frightful state of marriage? Who shall say how many heroines unknown to fame there are who imitate her? Their husbands are weak-willed, foolish, idle, extravagant, dissipated, and generally ne"er-do-weel; but instead of helplessly sitting down to regret their marriage-day, they take the management of everything into their own hands, and make the best of the inevitable by patient endurance in well-doing. It is sometimes said that "any husband is better than none." Perhaps so; in the sense of his being a sort of domestic Attila, a "scourge of G.o.d" to "whip the offending Adam" out of a woman and turn her into an angel, as the wives of some bad husbands seem to become.
"I will do anything," says Portia, in the "Merchant of Venice," "ere I will be married to a sponge;" and in answer to the question--"How like you the young German, the Duke of Saxony"s nephew?" she answers: "Very vilely in the morning, when he is sober; and most vilely in the afternoon, when he is drunk: when he is best he is a little worse than a man; and when he is worst he is little better than a beast: an the worst fall that ever fell, I hope I shall make shift to go without him."
When a poor girl has not had Portia"s discernment to discover such faults before marriage, what can she do? She can do her best.
"What knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband?"
Endeavouring to do this, you will not only have the answer of a good conscience, but will have taken the best precaution against falling yourself, so that it never can be truly said of you--
"As the husband is, the wife is; thou art mated with a clown, And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down."
It has been said that to have loved and lost--either by that total disenchantment which leaves compa.s.sion as the sole subst.i.tute for love which can exist no more, or by the slow torment which is obliged to let go day by day all that const.i.tutes the diviner part of love, namely, reverence, belief, and trust, yet clings desperately to the only thing left it, a long-suffering apologetic tenderness--this lot is probably the hardest any woman can have to bear.
"What is good for a bootless bane?-- And she made answer, "Endless sorrow.""
This answer should never have been made, for none but the guilty can be long and completely miserable. The effect and duration of sorrow greatly depends upon ourselves. "If thou hast a bundle of thorns in thy lot, at least thou need"st not insist on sitting down on them." Nor must we forget that there is a "wondrous alchemy in time and the power of G.o.d"
to trans.m.u.te our sorrows, as well as our faults and errors, into golden blessings.
It is an old maxim that if one will not, two cannot quarrel. If one of the heads of a house has a bad temper, there is all the more reason for the other to be cool and collected, and capable of keeping domestic peace. Think of Socrates, who, when his wife Zanthippe concluded a fit of scolding by throwing at him a bucket of water, quietly remarked, "After the thunder comes the rain." And when she struck him, to some friends who would have had him strike her again, he replied, that he would not make them sport, nor that they should stand by and say, "_Eia Socrates, eia Zanthippe!_" as boys do when dogs fight, animate them more by clapping hands.
If we would learn how to make the worst instead of the best of a matrimonial bargain, Adam, the first husband, will teach us. He allowed himself to be tempted by Eve, and then like a true coward tried to put all the blame upon her. This little bit of history repeats itself every day. "In the state of innocency Adam fell; and what should poor Jack Falstaff do in the days of villainy?"
There is another way in which people make the worst instead of the best of their bad matrimonial bargains. "Faults are thick where love is thin," and love having become thin they exaggerate the badness of their bargains. A man, having one well-formed and one crooked leg, was wont to test the disposition of his friends, by observing which leg they looked at first or most. Surely the last people we should draw with their worst leg foremost are our life partners. The best of men are only _men_ at the best. They are, as Sterne said, "a strange compound of contradictory qualities; and were the accidental oversights and folly of the wisest man--the failings and imperfections of a religious man--the hasty acts and pa.s.sionate words of a meek man--were they to rise up in judgment against them, and an ill-natured judge to be suffered to mark in this manner what has been done amiss, what character so unexceptionable as to be able to stand before him?" Ought husbands and wives to be ill-natured judges of what is amiss?
"Let a man," says Seneca, "consider his own vices, reflect upon his own follies, and he will see that he has the greatest reason to be angry with himself." The best advice to give husband and wife is to ask them to resolve in the words of Shakespeare, "I will chide no breather in the world but myself, against whom I know most faults." Why beholdest thou the mote that is in the eye of thy matrimonial bargain, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
When you find yourself complaining of your matrimonial bargain, think sometimes whether you deserve a better one. What right and t.i.tle has thy greedy soul to domestic happiness or to any other kind of happiness?
"Fancy," says Carlyle, "thou deservest to be hanged (as is most likely), thou wilt feel it happiness to be only shot." We may imagine that we deserve a perfect matrimonial bargain, but a less partial observer like Lord Braxfield might make a correction in our estimate. This Scotch judge once said to an eloquent culprit at the bar, "Ye"re a verra clever chiel, mon, but I"m thinkin" ye wad be nane the waur o" a hangin"."
Equally instructive is the story of a magistrate, who, when a thief remonstrated, "But, sir, I must live," replied, "I don"t recognize the necessity." It is only when we cease to believe that we must have supreme domestic and other kinds of felicity, that we are able with a contented mind to bear our share of the "weary weight of all this unintelligible world."
In reference to marriage and to everything else in life, we should sometimes reflect how much worse off we might be instead of how much better. Perhaps you are like the man who said, "I must put up with it,"
when he had only turkey and plum pudding for dinner. If, as it has often been said, all men brought their grievances of mind, body, and estate--their lunacies, epilepsies, cancers, bereavement, beggary, imprisonment--and laid them on a heap to be equally divided, would you share alike and take your portion, or be as you are? Without question you would be as you are. And perhaps if all matrimonial bargains were to be again distributed, it would be better for you to keep what you have than to run the chance of getting worse. A man who grumbled at the badness of his shoes felt ashamed on meeting with one who had no feet.
"Consider the pains which martyrs have endured, and think how even now many people are bearing afflictions beyond all measure greater than yours, and say, "Of a truth my trouble is comfort, my torments are but roses as compared to those whose life is a continual death, without solace, or aid, or consolation, borne down with a weight of grief tenfold greater than mine.""
"Oft in life"s stillest shade reclining, In desolation unrepining, Without a hope on earth to find A mirror in an answering mind, Meek souls there are, who little dream Their daily strife an angel"s theme, Or that the rod they take so calm Shall prove in Heaven a martyr"s palm."
One of these "meek souls" is reported to have said to a friend, "You know not the joy of an accepted sorrow." And of every disappointment, we may truly say that people know not how well it may be borne until they have tried to bear it. This, which is true of disappointment in general, is no less true of the disappointments of a married pair. Those who have not found in marriage all that they fondly, and perhaps over sanguinely, antic.i.p.ated, may, after some time, become to a certain extent happy though married, if they resolve to do their best under the circ.u.mstances.
CHAPTER VII.
MARRIAGE CONSIDERED AS A DISCIPLINE OF CHARACTER.
"Certainly wife and children are a kind of Discipline of Humanity."--_Bacon._
"I well remember the bright a.s.senting laugh which she (Mrs.
Carlyle) once responded to some words of mine, when the propriety was being discussed of relaxing the marriage laws. I had said that the true way to look at marriage was as a discipline of character."--_Froude._
"Did you ever see anything so absurd as a horse sprawling like that?"
This was the hasty exclamation of a connoisseur on taking up a small cabinet picture. "Excuse me," replied the owner, "you hold it the wrong way: it is a horse galloping." So much depends upon the way we look at things. In the preceding chapter we spoke of making the best of bad matrimonial bargains. Perhaps it would help some people to do this if they looked at marriage from a different point of view--if they considered it as a discipline of character rather than as a short cut to the highest heaven of happiness. Certainly this is a practical point of view, and it may be that those who marry in this spirit are more likely to use their matrimony rightly than those who start with happiness as their only goal. That people get happiness by being willing to pa.s.s it by and do without it rather than by directly pursuing it, is as true of domestic felicity as of other kinds.
"Ven you"re a married man, Samivel," says Mr. Weller to his son Sam, "you"ll understand a good many things as you don"t understand now; but vether it"s worth while going through so much to learn so little, as the charity boy said ven he got to the end of the alphabet, is a matter o"
taste: I rayther think it isn"t." Strange that a philosopher of the senior Mr. Weller"s profundity should underestimate in this way the value of matrimony as a teacher. We have it on the authority of a widower who was thrice married, that his first wife cured his romance, the second taught him humility, and the third made him a philosopher.
Another veteran believes that five or six years of married life will often reduce a naturally irascible man to so angelic a condition that it would hardly be safe to trust him with a pair of wings.
Webster asks--
"What do you think of marriage?
I think, as those do who deny purgatory, It locally contains either heaven or h.e.l.l, There is no third place in it."
Is this true? We think not, for we know many married people who live in a third place, the existence of which is here denied. They are neither intensely happy nor intensely miserable; but they lose many faults, and are greatly developed in character by pa.s.sing through a purgatorial existence. Nor is this an argument against matrimony, except to those who deny that "it is better to be seven times in the furnace than to come out unpurified."
Sweet are the uses of this and every other adversity when these words of Sir Arthur Helps are applicable to its victims or rather victors: "That man is very strong and powerful who has no more hopes for himself, who looks not to be loved any more, to be admired any more, to have any more honour or dignity, and who cares not for grat.i.tude; but whose sole thought is for others, and who only lives on for them."
The young husband may imagine that he only takes a wife to add to his own felicity; taking no account of the possibility of meeting a disposition and temper which may, without caution, mar and blight his own. Women are not angels, although in their ministrations they make a near approach to them. Women, no more than men, are free from human infirmities; the newly-married man must therefore calculate upon the necessity of amendment in his wife as well as of that necessity in himself. The process, however, as well as the result of the process, will yield a rich reward. At a minister"s festival meeting "Our Wives"
was one of the toasts. One of the brethren, whose wife had a temper of her own, on being sportively asked if he would drink it, exclaimed, "Aye, heartily; Mine brings me to my knees in prayer a dizzen times a day, an" nane o" you can say the same o" yours."
If even bad matrimonial bargains have so much influence in disciplining character, how much more may be learned from a happy marriage! Without it a man or woman is "Scarce half made up." The enjoyments of celibacy, whatever they may be, are narrow in their range, and belong to only a portion of our nature; and whatever the excellences of the bachelor"s character, he can never attain to a perfected manhood so long as such a large and important part of his nature as the affections for the gratification of which marriage provides, is unexercised and undeveloped. There are in his nature latent capabilities, both of enjoyment and affection, which find no expression. He is lacking in moral symmetry. The motives from which he keeps himself free from marriage responsibilities may be worthy of the highest respect, but this does not hinder his character from being less disciplined than it might have been.
"For indeed I know Of no more subtle master under heaven Than is the maiden pa.s.sion for a maid, Not only to keep down the base in man, But teach high thoughts and amiable words, And love of truth, and all that makes a man."
On both sides marriage brings into play some of the purest and loftiest feelings of which our nature is capable. The feeling of ident.i.ty of interest implied in the marriage relation--the mutual confidence which is the natural result--the tender, chivalrous regard of the husband for his wife as one who has given herself to him--the devotion and respect of the wife for the husband as one to whom she has given herself--their mutual love attracted first by the qualities seen or imagined by each in the other, and afterwards strengthened by the consciousness of being that object"s best beloved--these feelings exert a purifying, refining, elevating influence, and are more akin to the religious than any other feelings. Love, like all things here, is education. It renders us wise by expanding the soul and stimulating the mental powers.
"Yes, love indeed is light from heaven: A spark of that immortal fire With angels shared, by Allah given, To lift from earth our low desire.
Devotion wafts the mind above, But heaven itself descends in love; A feeling from the G.o.dhead caught, To wean from self each sordid thought; A ray of Him who formed the whole; A glory circling round the soul!"
It has been well said, "The first condition of human goodness is something to love; the second, something to reverence." Both these conditions meet in a well-chosen alliance.
Married people may so abuse matrimony as to make it a very school for scandal; but it may and ought to be what Sir Thomas More"s home was said to be, "a school and exercise of the Christian religion." "No wrangling, no angry word, was heard in it; no one was idle; every one did his duty with alacrity and not without a temperate cheerfulness." This atmosphere of love and duty which pervaded his home must have been owing in a great measure to the household goodness of Sir Thomas himself. For though his first wife was all that he could have desired, his second was ill-tempered and little capable of appreciating the lofty principles that actuated her husband. "I have lived--I have laboured--I have loved.
I have lived in them I loved, laboured for them I loved, loved them for whom I laboured." Well might Sir Thomas add after this reflection, "My labour hath not been in vain;" for to say nothing of its effect upon others, how it must have disciplined his own character!
"There is nothing," you say, "in the drudgery of domestic life to soften." No; but, as Robertson of Brighton says, "a great deal to strengthen with the sense of duty done, self-control, and power. Besides you cannot calculate how much corroding rust is kept off, how much of disconsolate, dull despondency is hindered. Daily use is not the jeweller"s mercurial polish, but it will keep your little silver pencil from tarnishing."