THE INCIDENTS AND ACCIDENTS OF MARRIAGE.

But even if you have chosen the best of women for your companion, whether it be due to your merit or your good fortune, the great problem of happiness is not yet solved, for there are so many incidents and accidents which disturb it when least we expect them.

Your wife is never a meteorite fallen from the sky, but a fruit still attached to the branch, and this branch is taken from a trunk, which is the family to which she belongs. When you marry her you must inevitably marry her relations also; you must enter a clan which may be a garden of roses, but may be also a wasp’s nest—nay, even a nest of vipers.

Do not allow yourself any illusions, believing that when once you are legitimate master of your companion you will be able to isolate yourself in the nest of your domestic felicity, chasing away wasps and crushing the vipers, if there should be any. I will suppose that the woman loves you much, and adores you above all creatures in the world, but the clan from which she has been taken will complain of you, protest and conspire against you. Her parents have ceded the government of one of their provinces to you, but still hold the protectorate and place a resident near, and they reserve the right of intervention in many, unfortunately in too many, cases.

The idea of a wife, then, would be that she should be an orphan with only the most distant relations or guardians, who are happy to have her well married. But here again there are new complications. To be an orphan at an early age means, since the parents died young, to belong to an unhealthy stock. The decadence of many English families is due to this very fact. The younger sons of the nobility, who bear a noble name, but have an empty purse, seek to equalize blazonry and finance by marrying orphans, or only daughters, and thus they bring into the new family the risk of an infirm state of health and sterility.

It is only too true that all the gravest problems of life are so framed that when you have succeeded with patience and labour in untying one knot, others form under your fingers.

The wife, however, might be an orphan from other causes, independent of the health of the parents, and that would be the highest ideal—for example, a girl who had escaped from a fire, or a railway accident, in which both parents (alike robust) were killed. I am supposing things incredible, or at least improbable; I make cruel conjectures, but what can I do? A scolding, wicked, or jealous mother-in-law is worse than a fire and railway disaster together.

Those good, courteous, intelligent mothers-in-law need not alarm themselves—those who become a second mother to their sons-in-law, who double the delights of the dual life, who bring you the valuable blessing of experience and disinterested affection, and who act in the domestic storm as conciliatory judges. Hosanna and everlasting glory to such beings, sent by Providence to double your happiness.

For I only speak of others who, without being bad, are women, or rather men, with all the congenital defects of the race of Adam.

The best of mothers-in-law always sees in you an intruder, a rival, a man who has robbed her of her daughter, and since she is good she will not worry you; but she will make scenes of jealousy; she will not plot against you with your wife, but will swallow so much bitterness day by day in the secret silence of her house as to enlarge her liver, so that some day or other her moral jaundice will be scattered through the atmosphere of your home, and you too will feel the bitterness.

I understand and am indulgent. That bitterness is distilled from the deepest and most delicate regions of the heart. To have loved a daughter for twenty or thirty years, to have brought her into the world with pain, to have suckled her with spasms, to have educated her with a wise love, after having breathed the same air, eaten at the same table, shared bread and tears; and then for the first comer, just because he wears trousers and has an impudent moustache, to rob her of all that treasure with an arrogance as if he claimed and took his own—that is hard. And as if that were not enough, the daughter, the angel of her domestic temple, runs after the trousers and moustaches, and goes away, abandoning her mother’s and her own house, as if she were leaving a room at an hotel in which she had passed the night.

Let us be just! Who will dare to throw the first stone at that poor woman, the pitiable mother? Who would dare ill treat her if she asked as a charity the favour that her daughter’s new home should be near hers, if she implored you to allow her to visit her often? Man is egotistic and feels paternity less than woman, but even if only in a slight degree he ought to understand the hidden hell of a mother-in-law who has to watch her daughter leave her own nest.

The marriage of a loved daughter is an event expected and desired, but it is like a birth, a blessing accompanied by tremendous pain. Elect natures feel the pain, but do not show it, lest they should give pain to others, and never convert it into hate.

Others, on the contrary, transform every drop of bitterness which they swallow into a feeling of vengeance, which they ruminate on for some time and hatch with cruel patience, to launch it against you when least you expect it.

I may suppose you to be patient and good, to be an optimist in your philosophy; you will be deaf to the most mellifluous insinuations, you will say Thank you when your foot is trodden on, and Thank you for the rhubarb lozenge which will be offered you—in short, you will take the points from all the darts launched against you; but there will come a day in which patience, goodness, philosophy, will be scattered to the wind, and you, with so much repressed wrath, will burst out all at once, and placing yourself before your wife, will say:

“There must be an end to all this; it must be either I or her!”

The proverbs of all European languages, the satires of the poets, the wit of dramatists, have always agreed in compassionating the sons-in-law, and hurling darts against the mothers-in-law. This experience of many centuries has taught us that a good mother-in-law is very rare, and that in marriage she is an element most pregnant with danger, most fruitful in disaster.

From all this we ought to learn two things:

1st. Before taking a wife to study the character of the future mother-in-law well, and to try and discover whether we shall find in her an angel or a harpy, an ally or an enemy.

2d. According to the result of our psychological inquiry we ought to declare most decidedly that we will not live with the family of the wife, nor take her mother into our house. If the chosen one of our heart really loves us she will consider this decision of ours quite just, and will help us to gain the victory if a battle there must be.

In your own case do not pass it over, do not cede a hand’s breadth of land; keep firm in your intention, being quite convinced that by so doing you will make your own happiness, that of your wife, and of the new family. Between mother-in-law and son-in-law there ought to be affection and respect; a current of benevolent, delicate, and gentle sentiment ought to pass between them, but at a distance, a most respectful distance; so that no sparks, shocks, much less lightning flashes, may appear. Affection, not intimacy; respect, not subjection.

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But the complications do not finish with the problem of the mother-in-law. There is the other problem which arises when the candidate for marriage has lost his first wife, or the woman her first husband, or both of them their first partners, with or without children on one side or on both sides.

The possible combinations are these:

• Widow and widower
• without children.
• with children.
• of the man.
• of the woman.
• of both.
• Widower
• without children.
• with children.
• Widow
• without children.
• with children.

These various combinations are so many algebraical formulÆ in which one may find snares, dangers to happiness, and rancour without end.

If you are a widower and you marry a widow, and neither of you have children, no danger hangs over you. Liberty on both sides, no right nor pretext for intervention; marriage presents itself almost in the guise of an union between two young people.

You may indeed incur the danger of your wife making comparisons, and these not to your advantage. An old proverb says, Comparisons are odious, but I should like to make a correction and add that for him to whom they are unfavourable they are odious, but flattering to him who gains by them. Perhaps you may excel your predecessor, and your companion will be happy to find it so.

In any case, if you have your weak side inquire about the public and private virtues of the first husband, and put the results into the balance which must weigh the pros and cons of the marriage.

A widow and a widower may both have children, or one only may have them. The dangers in these cases are very different.

It is better for the wife to have them, for if the husband really loves her he will also love her children; and besides, being a man, he is less at home, and paternity is always an episode in his life and not the whole life, as maternity is with the woman. Then if the man has the good fortune not to have children he will often end by loving his wife’s as much as though they were his own.

In the case of there being children on both sides the balance may prove of advantage, because it is equal in weight and measure, and the two married people have cause to reproach themselves and to suffer for the same things.

The worst case is that of a widower with children to whose number the new wife adds; he must be an angel, his wife and children angels also, if no civil war breaks out in his house. Think of it well, think a hundred times. Do not complicate the marriage, already fraught with so many dangers, by imprudence and temerity.

In marriages between a widow and a widower the greatest danger arises from the children, who fear or see their future threatened, and who in their love for their lost parent believe the new marriage to be an outrage to the memory of the dear one.

It is in these cases that we see all that a man has of venom and baseness come up and soil and cover everything with defilement and poison; all the brutal possibilities of human egotism covered, it may be, with varnish but still the skeleton underlying every thought and feeling.

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Only one of the engaged persons may be widow or widower, and it is greatly to the honour of women that more men marry a second time than women. Man often finds more happiness in marriage than she does, while she is more faithful to the memory of the departed, and thinks more of her children than herself.

How many women I have known who, being left widows quite young, have sacrificed themselves, together with the need of loving and being loved, to their children, often to one alone; proud of their sacrifice, unconquerable against all temptations and against all the power of the most legitimate passions.

Do children know how to value this heroism hidden in the bosom of so many families? Do they understand that there is more courage required in this struggle of months and years than one day’s assault of a battery in battle?

Very rarely do they know it, for even the best of children do not return a hundredth part of the love they have received from their parents, and especially from their mother.

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Is happiness more easily to be found in the union of a widower and a young woman, or in that of a widow and a celibate?

The answer is difficult, for the problem is too vague, and individual qualities weigh too heavily in the balance, gradually modifying the surroundings, the affections now warding off dangers, now increasing them infinitely.

If other conditions be favourable the widow is generally an excellent wife for many reasons: She has lost many illusions, but has learned to know and excuse the egotism of man. Sometimes she will have been obliged to beg her first husband’s pardon for some accession of jealousy or caprice; and as a woman always occupies herself in everything more with other people’s happiness than her own, she wishes to give her second husband perfect bliss, and often and willingly succeeds. If she cannot offer her companion the virginal flower (which after all is more a myth than a real jewel) she can give him all the treasures of amorous experience, that is often worth more than a hundred virginities.

On the other hand the widower who marries a young woman has the great advantage of her not being able to make any odious comparisons, and he also brings precious gems to the new home which an unmarried man does not know or possess. He has learned to know all the little weaknesses and great virtues of woman, he has learned to become less egotistical, to think of others more than himself, and as separate from himself, and he generally is an excellent husband.

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In all intricate problems, in all the fatal confusions which present themselves in the marriage between widows and widowers, between widows, widowers, and celibates, the anchor of safety which saves from shipwreck is always the heart. When there is great love, and it is shared by two, who join hands forever, every difficulty is cleared away, and concord ends by hoisting its banner over the new house. The most ferocious hatred is conquered by generosity, by the indulgence of one who loves much, and after a short battle of the opposing forces love scatters its flowers and blessing over the new nest. Love is the strength of strengths, which surpasses all others, and in this case it is omnipotent, so that when it exists in all its proper energy on one side only, it absorbs all the minor energies, and on the fields threatened with hail and lightning the sun shines through the last drops of the beneficent rain, and the rainbow hangs its multicoloured bridge in the sky, drawing enemies nearer and making them allies.

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Of all the accidents which we may meet on the threshold of matrimony one of the most common is the stoppage of the way by someone who exclaims: “Halt! there is no passage here.”

You are a minor, or your loved one is, or the person who has the right to speak does not find your choice to his taste, and shuts the door of the temple you wish to enter in your face, securing it with many chains. Civil war is declared, and it is to be seen who can and ought to gain the victory.

This can and ought are not synonymous terms, because the parents on one side or the other can withhold their consent to your union, but many times they are in the wrong, and ought not to refuse to sanction the marriage.

As regards two lovers, if their love is sincere, if in their secret and confidential dialogues they have sworn the everlasting yes to each other, if they have nearly conjugated half of the verb to love, they believe that they have every right in the world to become husband and wife; and when they have tried all fair means to bend the will of the tyrant or tyrants they run away together, secretly, hoping that once the deed is done it will sooner or later receive the consent of those opposing it. Sometimes, however, the wandering sheep are discovered before the deed is consummated, and are re-conducted with many reproaches to their respective folds. In more serious cases spectres of single or double suicide, asphyxiation, poison, or the revolver may appear.

Should anyone find himself in such case meditating death, and have time to cast a look on these pages, let him leave the charcoal, the poison of the druggist, and the revolver of the armourer. Life is a good and beautiful thing that must be guarded with love, caressed with tenderness, and if love ought to be the bridegroom of the marriage, reason and good sense ought always to be present as witnesses.

If with a stroke of a magic wand one could raise all those who have committed self-destruction to life again, after having dressed their wounds, they would take up life gaily, and even another love affair.

Parents always have the duty and the right of speaking, protesting, and counselling, nay, even of interposing a veto, if they see their children’s future endangered when they have chosen love as arbitrator, but have forgotten to call good sense and reason as witnesses.

If you will marry an abject creature who will dishonour your name and the name of the family to which you belong, and of whom after a few months of warm passion you yourself will be ashamed; if you will marry a woman suffering from tuberculous disease, or one of a consumptive family, or where madness is present; if you will increase the sad patrimony of proletaries and the unemployed, having neither present nor future resources; if in one way or another you throw yourself with closed eyes head foremost into a bottomless abyss only to satisfy carnal excitement which you may call passion, but which is only the desire of the flesh—father and mother have full right to oppose your ruin with all possible means; and even if they should not succeed they will have done their duty. If the means they take succeed you will later on thank them with a warm gratitude.

In all these cases I allow you to combat, to weep, even tear out some of your hair; but the tears over, the muscles tired, gather up the hair you have torn out and present it to your fair one, telling her to keep it until your return as a pledge of your eternal faith; for you ought to leave, and that instantly, even on foot, even asking money of the tyrannical parents or of some compassionate friend. Travel in far countries, and who knows if on your return you will not find a neat little packet tied with rose-coloured ribbon—your letters, your hair, and perhaps the announcement of the marriage of your old fiancÉe.

If your love, instead, has known how to resist the long absence, if it has strengthened and grown, who knows if the hard parents will not be moved to pity and try to make an adjustment, provided, however, that there be no consumption, madness, or other calamities to dissuade you from marriage in an absolute and decided way. Better that you should die than sow death broadcast in future generations.

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There are some cases, however, in which the wrong is not yours, but is theirs who unreasonably and tyrannically oppose your happiness from prejudices of rank, avidity of money, or some caprice or other. If you are a count or marquis and love a girl of good family without a coat of arms, or if you are very rich and wish to marry an educated girl of angelic character, but who is not rich—in these and similar cases seek the help of your mother, who is nearly always more compassionate than your father, or ask counsel and help from some intimate friend, from one of the few who knows your heart like a book, and has never flattered you.

In these domestic contests it is very rare for right and reason to be on one side only; there is a little on this side and a little on that; your hands are too unsteady to hold the balance of justice steadily, and weigh with precision the pro and the con. Your mother, instead, who loves you as no one else can (not even your lover), and your friend who knows you well, see things from a dispassionate and calm point of view, and will judge justly whether you are right or wrong; and if you are neither mad nor a fool you will end by believing those who love you and desire your good; and, as the case may be, stand firm and you will win. The ancient Greek appealed against Philip, the modern miller appeals against Berlin, and both were right against Philip and against Frederick the Great. Your mother and friend will appeal to you not to fast entirely from love, but to be a little less hungry, and who knows but that they will end in being right against that king of kings Love—stronger than the father of Alexander the Great, greater than Frederick the Great.

If they really love you, and are persons of good sense, they will say neither No! nor Never! to you, but will content themselves by saying, Have a little patience; wait.

Time is the chief and capable corrector of the proof sheets of the sketches of love, as also the policy of Fabius the temporizer, who knew how to gain so many wars by skirmishes and battles.

The stone of comparison enables us to distinguish gold from ignoble metal; time teaches us to separate with certainty true love from the desire of the flesh, from the fussy exactions of self-love and all that is plated. And perhaps, besides your mother and friend, you will listen to the long experience of him who writes, and will hear his voice, which says to you, cries to you, supplicates you:

Let time take its course, ever and always.