Rambles in Womanland :: CHAPTER IV RAMBLES ABOUT MATRIMONY I

CHAPTER IV RAMBLES ABOUT MATRIMONY I

I have many times been asked the question, Who are the best subjects for matrimony? I believe (kindly mark that I do not say I am sure) that the best subjects for matrimony are people with simple tastes, equable tempers, no very great aspirations, satisfied with doing little and being little. These, at all events, are the kind of people most likely to be happy in matrimony, far more likely than, say, for instance, the 'intellectuals,' who are ever in search of the pathway that leads to the higher walks of life, who have ambitions to satisfy and many inducements to divert their minds from the peaceful ways of contentment and happy matrimony. Little things please little minds, and those couples, whom we have all met in life, who know nothing, who dream of nothing above what they have got, who are perfect mutual admiration societies, are the best subjects for matrimony. These people, snoring under the same curtain, eating out of the same plate, as it were, having the same tastes, persuaded that no one is blessed with such children as they have, satisfied with all they do, sure that the religion they follow is the only true one in the world, spend a peaceful and happy life in the exchange of familiarities which, for them, constitute love. They respect and enjoy each other; they echo each other's sentiments; and their beings are coupled together, trotting along, like two dogs well looked after. Their discussions at home are never on any higher questions than whether green peas are better with duck than Brussels sprouts. They are cheerful, smiling. She calls him Smith or Brown, and he never speaks of her but as 'my good lady.' Before the children they call each other 'father' and 'mother.' They may be grocers, fruiterers—I don't care what they are; they are happy, perfect subjects for matrimony.

What divers and strange unions are sanctioned by matrimony, to be sure! By the side of resigned couples, harnessed together and painfully dragging the plough, those who have never been able to understand each other, through want of space, because they were too near to make proper observations; those who, alas! understand each other too well; sweet, amiable women of poetic dispositions, chained to matter-of-fact, brutal men; honest, saving, hard-working men fastened for life to silly, thoughtless, extravagant women; romantic women married to men who see no difference between Vesuvius in eruption and the smoking chimneys of Pittsburg or Birmingham; women of a keen, humorous disposition living with dullards unable to see a joke; Wagnerians having for wives women who prefer the music of 'The Casino Girl' to that of 'Lohengrin': almost everywhere tragedy or comedy.

Matrimony is a very narrow carriage. If you want to be comfortable in it you have to be careful, or one will soon be in the way of the other. To put yourself to a little inconvenience now and then is the only way of making the other comfortable. To believe that love alone, without careful study, will resist all the shocks and will be all the more durable that it is ardent is the greatest mistake one can make in the world. Violent passion may be compared to Hercules, who might have enough strength to raise a palace on his shoulders, but not enough to stand a cold in his head. It is the thousand and one little drawbacks of matrimonial life that undermine it. Love will survive a great misfortune, but will be killed by the little miseries of conjugal partnership. In matrimony it is the little things that count and which, added up, make a terrible total. The waning love of a wife will not be revived by the present of a thousand pound pair of ear-rings, but it may be kept up by the daily present of a penny bunch of violets, which reminds her that you think of her every day of your life. It is not the great sacrifices that appeal to her as do constant little concessions. Many men would sacrifice their lives who would not give up smoking or their too frequent visits to their clubs for their wives. Many women will be the incarnation of devotion and self-abnegation who will not do their hair as their husbands beg them to.

Surely matrimony ought to procure happiness, for the greatest bliss on earth should be to love in peaceful security with the guarantee of the morrow. Matrimony is all right. So are the symphonies of Beethoven—when they are performed by orchestras who play in time and in tune.

The worst—indeed, the only serious—drawback to matrimony is that it is an everyday meal which, palatable as it may be, runs the risk of becoming insipid, and of making fastidious the people who have to partake of it. True, but then let people who are intelligent and thoughtful supply seasoning which will whet the appetite and combat Habit, that demon which is their deadliest enemy.

It is folly, rank folly, to believe that it is wise, even prudent, to exhaust all at once the sum of happiness, illusion, and love with which one enters the state of matrimony, and to give one's self body and soul until, soon satiated and by-and-by tired of each other, both will turn their heads away in disgust, and may, later on, lose them in despair.

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