Modern marriage and how to bear it Part 3

_Haphazard Marriages_ 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 _drift_ 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 manuvring in _Man and Superman_, where he also expresses his conviction that 'men, to protect themselves ...

have set up a feeble, romantic conviction that the initiative in s.e.x 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 a.s.sumed 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 pa.s.siveness, and openly fling coil after coil about him until he is secured for ever!'

_The Marriage of Affection._--'Do you know any thoroughly happy couples?' says one of the characters in _Double Harness_.

'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.'

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!

Sixty years ago George Sand wrote: 'You ask me whether you will be happy 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.'

To the same effect writes R. L. Stevenson when he says: 'I suspect Love is rather too violent a pa.s.sion to make in all cases a good domestic character.' Of course no very young people will believe this, but it is a 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 pa.s.sionate 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 G.o.d's sake, love me less, and treat me better,' snapped the outraged lover, and we can but sympathise with him.

I have purposely used the word _Affection_ 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 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 _me_ 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.

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.

II

WHY WE FALL OUT: DIVERS DISCORDS

'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.'

--R. L. STEVENSON.

We 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 circ.u.mstance has been favourable.

It was Socrates, I think, who said: 'Whether you marry or whether you remain unmarried, you will repent it.' The people who a.s.sert 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 inst.i.tution must be p.r.o.nounced successful, however unhappy married people may be.

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.

As with the rest of life, in matrimony it is the little things that count, and the frail barque of married happiness founders princ.i.p.ally 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 _do_ get in the way, but they can be seen from afar and steered clear of.

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!'

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 after the man I remembered as a radiant bridegroom.

'Oh, he's gone the way of all husbands,' she said, with a sigh; 'liver, my dear.'

'Do you mean he's dead?' I asked, shocked and pained.

'Oh, dear, no, he's alive enough, but he's developed liver and that's killed our love,' was the cynical reply.

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.

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 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 const.i.tutional 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-b.u.t.ter 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 a.s.sured 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 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.

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.

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 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 j.a.pes 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.

As a fact, the things that amuse men frequently fail to amuse women and _vice versa_ 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 a.s.sume amus.e.m.e.nt 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.

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.'

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--

'A hurried, happy line!

A little jest too slight for one so dead: This did I not endure-- Then with a shuddering heart no more I read,'

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 pa.s.sion, 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.

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 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.

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 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 manuvre, choosing this time the little Andromeda, a plain child still in the nursery. The family, though disappointed, remained hopeful, and the years pa.s.sed 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!

A long friendship and a short engagement is perhaps the best combination. A prolonged engagement is the most trying relationship between the s.e.xes possible to conceive. For the woman it means the drawbacks of matrimony without its charm of 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 pa.s.sion 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 circ.u.mstances, 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.

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 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 '_chair-a-chair_ closeness of the English home.'

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 pa.s.sion habit has killed it must certainly have created more genuine affections.

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 pa.s.sion. But we are not now dealing with pa.s.sion, but with the ordinary affection between people who have to live together under the trying conditions of modern marriage, and in these circ.u.mstances one must agree with Dumas as to the wonders worked by habit.

Indeed, if people only realised it, habit is the cement which holds the edifice of matrimony together. With the pa.s.sing 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 _not_ 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.'

I think it is de la Rochfoucauld who says: 'Absence deepens great pa.s.sions 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 _during_ 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 G.o.ds! how different it really proves! What a hideous disappointment the meeting is! How different the Beloved looks from our pa.s.sionate 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, _we have learnt to do without him_, 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 f.a.gged 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, _he has learnt to do without us_. When husbands and wives learn this lesson, the good ship 'Wedded Bliss' is getting into perilous waters where danger of utter wreck looms large.

But it is equally fatal to go to the other extreme, and I entirely agree with that auth.o.r.ess (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 not work at _something_. 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 const.i.tuted on a plane of inhuman goodness and possess infinite love, tact, and patience if the two are to live happily together.

The same principle applies to women, though it is not generally recognised. I am convinced that a great number of middle-cla.s.s 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 s.e.x 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.