Mrs. Bilston: Marriage is a necessary evil; without it, we

should have no divorce.—Sheepshanks: Love, the Registrar.

I suppose all of us, except those methodical people who keep all their letters, and those who, yet more cold-blooded, destroy all their letters, find that they have little bundles left about in old drawers containing the correspondence that was addressed to them on such and such an occasion—when they won a prize, when they suffered a bereavement, and so on. I find I have just such a batch of documents relating to my engagement. Some of them are too conventional, some of them too personal to quote, but it can do no harm to give a few of them here, to show how we congratulated one another in those days upon a situation which, however the centuries slip past us, never loses its freshness. Here, then, is Lady Combe: the frigidity of her manner, I must here insist, was due to a natural incapacity to expand even in honour of an occasion, and does not betray any lack of good-will towards her fortunate young tenant:

I cannot wait till your return to Greylands to send you my heartiest good wishes, and Sir Richard’s along with them. You would think me ungracious if I did not record the pleasure it gives me personally to hear that you intend remaining at Greylands and bringing your husband over to live in England. In my young days it was thought more natural for a wife to take up her residence with her husband and allow him to follow his own career, but doubtless this feeling has changed, as so much else has. Anyhow, I trust that you will be very happy. I am sure that you will have been too sensible to allow yourself to be carried away by your impetuous temperament into a step you would afterwards regret. Americans, I believe, have great charm sometimes: indeed, Sir Richard’s grandmother was a Canadian. So many marriages seem to turn out unhappy nowadays, and yet I don’t believe it’s because men are different from what they were; it seems to me that modern women don’t know how to treat them: they haven’t the home tact and the yieldingness, if I may use such a word, which makes for domestic harmony. You, I am sure, my dear Opal, will not fall into the mistake of looking upon your husband as a chattel to be played with. I do hope you will see your way to having the marriage performed down at West Mill. That Rowlands woman, of course, does make it difficult, but I know you agree with me that down in the country we must keep things together: and Rowlands himself is an excellent, well-meaning little man; I sometimes think it is a pity the Bishop does not recognize his services by transferring him to another living. Please let us know what you mean to do as soon as it is convenient, and accept my very earnest hopes that all will turn out for the best with regard to the step you are taking.

Mrs. Rowlands’ letter came by the same mail; you felt as if she had written it as a counterblast:

I cannot tell you what pleasure it gives me to hear that you are bringing a citizen of that very remarkable country you have been travelling in, to wake us all up, and, yes, uplift us all, in our little world at West Mill. I am sure you will not mind my taking such an abstract view of a step which to you, of course, is primarily a personal matter. But we women, when we marry, have to pass out of the self-centred, personal atmosphere in which our effete system of education nurtures us, and take upon ourselves public duties and public responsibilities as the mothers of the women and men that are to be. Your family should start life with good chances: there is nothing, I have always held, like the infusion of some overseas blood to virilize our English stock. (I was deeply interested in what you said in your letter a few weeks ago about the Mormons.) I only hope that your husband does not bring with him from America that curious survival of the attitude miscalled “chivalry” towards women which is still found among his fellow-countrymen. You, with your up-to-date viewpoint, will in any case teach him to realize that the old clinging, sex-conscious attitude of a woman towards her husband can lead to nothing but the divorce court. Husband and wife (I know you agree with me) must be comrades before they are anything else: they must not be afraid to speak their minds to one another and stand up to one another if need be—I remember putting this to Harry when we became engaged, and he thoroughly agreed with me.

And now, I do hope that, whether you are married here or in London, you will be married according to the ceremonial of the Book of Modern Prayer. You will excuse my entering into technicalities, but I know you are one of those to whom the shell and the outward forms of religion (quite rightly) do not appeal, so I thought you would not mind my advising you as to the state of the case. The Revision of the Prayer Book, which arose out of the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline appointed in 1904, is, since last year, an accomplished fact. Most unfortunately, the Revisers could not, even at the last, come to a complete agreement on all points of detail, and consequently there are now five service-books which have equal authority in the Church, (1) the Book of Common Prayer, just as it used to be, (2) the Abridged Book of Common Prayer, which is the same with the tautologies cut out, (3) the Book of Ancient and Modern Prayer, which is only used by the Westernizers, (4) the Revised Book of Common Prayer, a temporizing document which was highly recommended by all the Bishops and is, as far as I know, used nowhere, (5) the Book of Modern Prayer, which is in use at West Mill. This last, although its compilers were men who believe that God exists (in so far as it is possible for us to be sure that anything exists, and in what ever sense we can do so) is far better suited than the others for those who, like yourself, have no such definite convictions. It has completely abolished the old marriage-by-capture terminology of the earlier Prayer Book, about “obeying,” “honouring” and what not. It is sensible enough to allow for the possibility that, while it is to be hoped the contract is a permanent one, it may quite conceivably have to be rescinded at the close of a period of ten years. It is very important just now that people in a prominent position, like yourself, should use this formula, because so many people attend weddings who do not ordinarily come to Church at all: and we want them to realize what it is that Christians do and what it is that Christians do not claim. I do hope you will pardon my troubling you about all this; but it is as well to look ahead, isn’t it?

Lady Lushcombe,^[5] too, was among the first to congratulate me. I was the more touched by this, as she was having great trouble at the time with her fourth husband; and I could appreciate the kindly thought which induced her to type at all, though the contents of her letter were not precisely cheering:

(You must still let me call you mine, even though this Yankee ogre is going to run away with you)—How to congratulate you on the splendid news which has just been broadcasted here? I assure you, nobody talks of anything else. Bertha was in here yesterday, and she positively raved about you. We are all so glad that you are bringing your tame bear back to England with you, and look forward with tremendous excitement to the day when you will exhibit him. I do most earnestly hope that you will be happy: I’m sure you deserve to be; one gives up so much, does one not, in tying oneself up to a stranger for years and years like that. I believe marriage will be good for you, because from having no brothers or sisters you’ve had a very easy life up to now, and it must be difficult for you to sympathize with all the unhappiness there is in the world. Now you’ve taken your coat off and come into the ring with the rest of us: more strength to your arm! You’ll find men are more intolerable the more you get to know them; hopelessly selfish, and quite without manners. The only thing to do with them, my dear, is to disregard them. “Think only of thyself,” I was reading the other day in a perfectly fascinating Arabian philosopher: “think only of thyself, and nothing that happens to others will be able to violate thy peace of mind”—I thought that so wonderful, especially as the philosopher (I’ve forgotten his name) was unmarried, you know. The great thing is, I’m sure, to get all the enjoyment you can out of your romance while it lasts. Simply forget that the future must bring disillusionment, and plunge yourself in your happiness. And whenever trouble does come, be sure you come straight to me and let me hear all about it: I’ve not lived forty years for nothing! Once again, my sweet Opal, all my best wishes to you. I will tell you my own news when you get home.

The very first thing I had done after getting over the first shock of happiness about my engagement was to wireless the news to Juliet Savage and ask her to be my best woman. Her answer was full of her usual good spirits and infectious optimism:

This is the best for years. I knew you’d go and do it if I let you go careering round America without me. I always thought Wynefryde would go first, but you’ve got ahead of her. As to assisting at the obsequies, you may count on me. Will it be at Grey? I should like to have old Rowlands saying, “Wilt thou on the one hand have this woman to thy wedded wife”—or have they given up all that sort of thing nowadays? Anyhow, I’ll mug up the service, and be word-perfect on the night. Now, what’s he like? You might have been more generous in your wireless: “Am engaged to short American with slight squint” would have told me the worst at once. But of course he’s tall? You always hated small men. I believe you’d be Mrs. Hoskyns by now, living on Boar’s Hill and calling on the other dons’ wives, if it weren’t for that. And pots of money, of course, or he couldn’t be “Lord”—what a comfort to have an aristocracy who can be sure where their next meal’s coming from! I shall lose no time in telling him about all your lurid past, because I suppose after the second time I’ve been to stay he’s sure to turn nasty about me and say, “My dear, I can’t have that woman in the house again; her cigars are too strong! it hangs in the curtains.” And then my lot would be an Opal-less one—oh very bad! So it’s just as well he should know I have a guilty hold over you.... The paper’s just come in, with a wirelessed portrait of him in it—it’s even more hopeless than most wirelessed portraits. They ought really to put “The features, reading from left to right, are ...” underneath them. You will have sent me a proper one by now. Only I do want you to come back, and tell me all about him. Darling, I am so excited.

Canon Dives was not slow to resume a somewhat interrupted acquaintance: his letter was, as usual, a masterpiece of diction:

So East and West have met; I hope, nay, I am sure, that you have made choice of a suitable partner; I dare hardly hope that you have found one worthy of you! Pray accept, from Mrs. Dives and myself, the warmest possible felicitations. And now, you will pardon a word or two of sermonizing from one who has watched, with a very real interest, your brilliant career at Oxford.

There is much talk about marriage nowadays which would incline one to imagine, did one judge only by the outward appearance of it, that the old idea of marriage as a Sacrament has disappeared from the modern world. We say no. We say a thousand times no. We say marriage has, if anything, become for our generation more of a Sacrament, a Sacrament in a deeper and fuller sense of the word, than it was for our fathers before us. We hear a great deal nowadays of relativity. Truth, we are told, is relative to the mind of the truth-perceiver. How fortifying, if rightly viewed, is this doctrine! It applies, does it not, to the case of husband and wife as much as elsewhere. To the husband, the wife, to the wife, the husband, seems a paragon of beauty, a treasure-house of wit, energy, and charm: old age comes, perhaps, and the bright eyes are dimmed and the raven hair silvers, and yet, between this loving pair, the ravages wrought by time are unmarked: he is still beautiful and charming to her, she to him. “For old sake’s sake she is still, dears, the prettiest doll in the world.” What, then, is the truth of the matter? May we not boldly say that the truth relative to their two minds—and all truth, remember, is relative to a mind—is that the man and the woman ARE REALLY the most beautiful pair of creatures in the world? That the honeyed whispers of love, which to the profane ear would seem to contain baseless flatteries, are nevertheless in a very real sense the Truth? Dear Miss Winterhead, if you brought home to us from America, per impossible, the most ungainly of hunchbacks, I for one would still hold it Truth that he was the handsomest of men, because to your Truth-perceiving mind he is so.

When we have gone so far, we may surely go further. Marriage, besides being a Sacrament, is a contract. A contract holds good so long, and only so long, as the essential facts of the situation, in consideration of which the contracting parties bound themselves, remain unaltered. Thus, if I am under contract to water a particular plant, my obligation ceases if the plant dies; or (to put the case more strongly) if a friend of mine hands me an egg, and I promise to put it under a hen and give it, when hatched, the freedom of my fowl-run, my contract automatically ceases if the egg proves to be that of a crocodile. Now, the marriage contract is made between two persons each of whom is to the other, and therefore philosophically speaking is, the most beautiful creature in the world. They are married, a shadow grows up between them, there are scenes, difficulties—suddenly they wake up to find that they are no longer in love with one another. He sees her as a vulgar harridan; she sees him as a churlish egotist. What has happened? Why, the facts have changed, the essential facts which formed the basis of the contract. He is no longer the same man, she is no longer the same woman. By all means, for practical purposes, keep up the formality of divorce. But a divorce is only a recognition of something that has already taken place. The contract has automatically expired. Therefore, dear Miss Winterhead, if it should happen (as I hope it will not happen for many, many years to come) that you should find yourself looking at Lord Porstock with other eyes than those you have for him at present, no one will be more ready than myself to admit that you are no longer married to him. I hope that my meaning is clear.

Let us take courage, then, and learn to find in the disturbing movements of our time a deeper and ever deeper significance. I send this with the most earnest prayer that your union will be abundantly blessed.

Juliet Savage did not like this letter. She said Canon Dives would argue the hind leg off a donkey. She also said she supposed, according to him, the question of whether a wife was true to her husband would have to be relative to her velocity. I confess I felt even at the time that there was a hitch about it somewhere. I will only quote one other letter, which came to me from Miss Linthorpe’s old butler: she had made comfortable provision for him, and he now lived not far from us in Hertfordshire:

I hope you will excuse the liberty of me and Mrs. Hodges sending our warmest congrats on the news we have seen reported in the paper. It seems very hard that poor Miss Linthorpe never lived to see you settled down comfortably. But it’s not for us to quarrel with Providence. I hope the young gentleman will settle down with you in England and make you very happy, which you deserve. And don’t you be led away, Miss Opal, if you will excuse me mentioning it, by all the talk there is about unhappy marriages and married folks not getting on by reason of incomparability of temper. I may be old-fashioned, but what I say is (and Mrs. Hodges the same) that if you’ve met Mr. Right you’ll be right, and you won’t ever let anything come between you, as some do. “The world has changed a great deal, Hodges,” as Miss Linthorpe said to me more than once, “since you and I went to school, but a man and a woman’s a man and a woman now as much as ever, even if the woman does get herself up in trousers and spats” (you’ll excuse my mentioning it, but those were Miss Linthorpe’s words, you know the way she had). And to my way of thinking a man and a woman are a man and a woman, so long as they don’t let anything come between them, as some do. I hear over in America they’re very free and easy with their marriages, and no sooner married than divorced, they tell me; but I’m sure your young gentleman isn’t like that, and won’t let anything come between you, which would not be natural considering what you are and how you will always, I am sure and Mrs. Hodges the same, make a good wife to him. So you will excuse an old man that has watched you grow up, Miss Opal, since the old days when you used to come over from Barstoke, sending my warmest congrats, and praying the Lord to bless you, as he did Rebecca and Rachel and Hannah in the Holy Bible, and Mrs. Hodges the same.

The preparations for the actual wedding were full of difficulty. In the first place, Porstock knew nobody in England, and had forgotten to ask anyone to be his best man. When the omission was discovered, he quite cheerfully suggested his mechanic, and actually asked him: he was, however, a Catholic, and “wasn’t sure but the priests would read him out from the altar” if he consented, a possibility of which he seemed to live in permanent dread. However, a great friend of our family, Frank Hopgood (the College of Heralds did take him back) consented to act on a rather slight acquaintance, which had sufficed to convince him that Porstock was “one of the very.” Then there was the question of where Porstock should stay on the night before the ceremony, since he could not stay with us—this tradition was one which my mother would not hear of departing from, although Mrs. Rowlands proved to her conclusively that it was a survival of marriage by capture. In the end, he stayed with the Combes, and I am afraid disappointed Lady Combe a good deal: she had expected him to be full of nervousness, and even tried, as far as her nature would permit, to rally him archly on his approaching happiness, but found him iron-nerved as usual. She said, for instance, that she supposed he would want to look his best for to-morrow (I fancy it must have been a bedtime hint), to which he replied that looking your best was nervous work while you were in the kissing and cuddling stage, but he wasn’t going to get rattled any about the aisle-walk. Altogether I am afraid he did not win golden opinions at The Pines. But after all, as he said, the point was to “get the parson busy,” and he had no patience with details. My mother insisted on “giving me away,” a pretty old custom which was even then falling into disuse.

Then there was the question of the form of service. Mrs. Rowlands’ Book of Modern Prayer was turned down at once, curiously by Juliet: she declared that she would inevitably get the staggers if I were asked “Wilt thou respect him and show all reasonable deference to him, love, humour, and tolerate him, in sickness (other than permanent insanity) and in health?”: nor was it with much less apprehension that she looked forward to my replying that I would “take him to my wedded husband, in accordance with the terms of the marriage settlement, till death, permanent insanity, cruelty, infidelity, or incompatibility of temperament us did part.” Finally we fell back on “The Revised Book of Common Prayer” (highly recommended by all the Bishops), which contented itself with altering “obey and serve” to “respect and co-operate with him,” and adding to the final words “so long as ye both shall live” the proviso “until the King shall take other order.” When it was explained to Porstock (after the ceremony) that this curious phrase allowed for the possibility of a divorce, he replied that the King would have to set his alarum clock at three any morning he wanted to take that kind of order—which was understood to indicate his unwillingness that His Majesty should move in the matter at all.

One or two of my friends, all of the older generation, kept up the old practice of giving wedding presents in kind—Lady Combe, for example, gave me a new form of “sluggard’s delight” (Porstock did not go to bed till two the night he stayed with them), which automatically boiled an egg every half-hour, and Lady Lushcombe some beautiful table silver with my maiden initials engraved upon it, explaining that it was “just as well to be prepared for all emergencies, my dear.” But cheques were already the usual form, and I was able to publish the fact that I had received cheques amounting to £2,600 13s. 4d. in honour of the occasion. The stupid and invidious habit of itemizing the list of cheques had not then grown up.

Of the ceremony itself I am but an indifferent witness; for, curiously enough, I felt very nervous and fidgety all the morning, and as I went up the church found myself actually turning faint; Juliet restored me to myself by whispering that it was a relic of marriage by capture. I am not going to describe my wedding-dress, for young ladies of forty years on to ridicule and call dowdy. Porstock’s wedding-suit, which had been specially made for him in Paris, was (as a silly compliment to myself) of a curious opalescent material which I have never seen before or since. The service was on the whole a simple one, out of respect for the village choir and for Mrs. Rowlands’ organ-playing: besides “O perfect Love,” which was of course by that time an official part of the service,^[6] we only had “The Voice that breathed o’er Eden” and Kipling’s Recessional. But, since we were rather long in the vestry doing the signatures, Mrs. Rowlands got tired of playing the Wedding March, and we finally left the church to an extemporization of her own, distantly based on alternate recollections of “The Star-spangled Banner” and “The Marseillaise.”

The breakfast afterwards was a very simple affair, as was usual in those days; the menu did not go over the page, and I doubt if the whole meal lasted more than three hours. There were, of course, the usual interminable speeches, in the course of which Sir Richard produced a very long metaphor about deep-sea fishing, under the mistaken impression that opals came out of oysters, and Porstock distinguished himself by declaring, before an astonished audience, that if they heard of anyone prospecting for the big noise in brides, they had better send them round to him right away. It was all very thrilling and very touching, and Mr. Hodges saying “God bless you!” moved me, I am afraid, to tears. But there was only one real moment in the day, and that was when Porstock got his hand on the lever, and the autumn glories of Hertfordshire leapt away from underneath.