Modern marriage and how to bear it Part 1

Modern marriage and how to bear it.

by Maud Churton Braby.

PART I

SIGNS OF UNREST

'The Subject of Marriage is kept too much in the dark. Air it!

Air it!'--GEORGE MEREDITH.

MODERN MARRIAGE

I

THE MUTUAL DISSATISFACTION OF THE s.e.xES

'The shadow of marriage waits, resolute and awful, at the cross-roads.' --R. L. STEVENSON.

Ever since the time, nineteen years ago, when Mrs Mona Caird attacked the inst.i.tution of matrimony in the _Westminster Review_ and led the way for the great discussion on 'Is Marriage a Failure?' in the _Daily Telegraph_--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 ba.n.a.l discussion on 'Should husbands have tea at home?' it will inevitably 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.

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 a.s.sume 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 sanct.i.ty of the inst.i.tution, and unceasingly exhort their congregations to respect it and abide by its laws. But the Divorce Court returns make 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.

Tolstoy says: 'The relations between the s.e.xes are searching for a new form, the old one is falling to pieces.' Among the ma.n.u.script 'remains'

of Ibsen, that profound student of human nature, the following noteworthy pa.s.sage 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.

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 a.s.sume that the time _will_ come, and that the present legal conditions of wedlock will be altered in some way or other.

Fifteen years ago there was a sudden wave of rebellion against these conditions, and a renewed interest in the s.e.x 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 _The Woman Who Did_. 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 _The Woman Who Did_; some of them entirely illiterate, all of them offering some infallible key to the difficult maze of marriage.

Worse still was the reaction that inevitably followed, when realism was tabooed in fiction, and sickly romance possessed the field. _The Yellow Book_ 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 word _s.e.x_ was strictly taboo, and the ideal aimed at was apparently the extreme opposite to real life.

It was odd how suddenly the s.e.x note--(as I will call it for want of a better word)--disappeared from the press. Psychology was p.r.o.nounced 'off,' and plots were the order of the day. Many names well-known at that time and a.s.sociated with a _flair_ 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.

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 s.e.xes 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 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?

Yet in the fourteen years that have elapsed since the publication of _The Woman Who Did_, 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 s.e.xes with each other. Men do not shun marriage only because of unfavourable financial conditions, or because 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 G.o.ds would laugh at this twentieth-century conjugal deadlock.

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 _a_ man; men to marry _the_ woman.' Nevertheless women are even now more p.r.o.ne 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.

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 s.e.xes 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 pa.s.ses but some journalist of the n.o.bler s.e.x 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 pa.s.sionate 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 s.e.x'

write to demand his instant execution and public disgrace.

The range of men's fault-finding is endless; one will a.s.sert 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 s.e.xless, slangy, misclad masculine monsters.

Judged by the a.s.sertions 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 cla.s.s 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 morals, no heart and absolutely _no_ sense of humour!

'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 sc.r.a.pe 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!

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 still more reluctance to enter the arena of matrimony.

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 _her_ will, but the mysterious will of Nature which remains steadfast and of unswerving purpose, indifferent to our s.e.x-warfare and the progress of our petty loves and hates. The inst.i.tution of marriage battered, abused, scarred with countless thousands of attacks, stained with the sins of centuries still continues to flourish, for, as Schopenhauer says; '_It is the future generation in its entire individual determination which forces itself into existence through the medium of all this strife and trouble._'

The _Will-to-Live_ will always have the last word!

II

WHY MEN DON'T MARRY

'If you wish the pick of mankind, take a good bachelor and a good wife.'

'There is probably no other act in a man's life so hot-headed and foolish as this of marriage.' --R. L. STEVENSON.

'Whatever may be said against marriage, it is certainly an experience.' --OSCAR WILDE.

'All 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 pa.s.sage: '_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 of how the girl may be injured. The times are ungallant and they want mending._'

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 _vraisemblance_ 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.

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.

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, said he fully meant to marry some day, but wanted a few more years' freedom first. Dorian gravely a.s.serted 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 s.e.x, 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.

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 in a rich return of feminine favour, but are nevertheless hardly sufficient to support a wife.

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.

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 pa.s.sionate letters to himself, in an a.s.sumed hand, and drop cleverly-manufactured tears 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!

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 _the_ 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.

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 find a home in one good woman's heart, and what a great, pure, pa.s.sionate, 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 _affaire_ 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 h.o.a.ry lie when they are more than willing to be poor, if but with him, willing to economise and save, and forego for his sake.