Part 7

Possibly the lack of an audience might take off a little of the edge of the bout for the battling husband and spouse; but, oh, how immeasurably it would add to the comfort and happiness of those of us who are the innocent bystanders and who are forced to look on, sick with horror, at these encounters! In all good truth I know of no other situation so miserable and so embarrassing as to be called upon to referee a fight between a married couple. Their quarrel is, to begin with, a matter with which we have no concern; one in which we do not desire to meddle; one in which we ardently wish to take neither side. It makes us feel as if we were cowards to keep silent while a man hurls deadly insults at his wife, and we writhe in vicarious shame while a woman vituperates her husband.

We have the sense of having assisted in an indecent orgy when a husband and wife strip every rag of reserve away from their relationship and fling open the doors of their skeleton closets, and rattle their bones in public. Nor are we consoled by the knowledge that the people who make public exhibitions of their tempers must enjoy doing so or else they would not do it. Yet we all number among our friends, husbands and wives, otherwise estimable and charming individuals, who always stage their fights in the most conspicuous place they can find, and who seem to prefer an audience to privacy. When you meet them for an evening’s diversion they are having a preliminary set-to. Perhaps the husband has come home late from the office, or has forgotten to mail a letter, or possibly the wife has kept her husband waiting while she did her hair over the second time. During the selection of the dinner they get warmed up to the work and put in some punches with real steam behind them. They clinch, and bite, and gouge over the selection of a play, and they reach for each other’s vital spots and get in dirty jabs at the supper dance that follows the play.

Doubtless the fighters are enjoying themselves, but a pleasant time is not being had by all. The abashed onlookers know not what to do. They do not know whether to rush in and make it a free-for-all fight or to try to mediate between the warring couple, or whether to pretend to have been suddenly stricken deaf, dumb and blind. And they wind up by feeling outraged that they should have been placed in such a mortifying position, and wishing heartily that husbands and wives would keep their quarrels for home consumption, and not inflict them on their friends.

The same strictures apply to the woman who henpecks her husband. That also is one of the quiet home joys that should be strictly confined to the domestic circle. I raise no voice of protest against the woman who has wit and strength and determination enough to oust her husband out of his position as head of the house and assume it herself. It is a matter between the husband and wife, and if he hasn’t enough spunk to fight for his rights he deserves to lose them. But why cannot the bossy women be content with exercising their tyranny quietly and unobtrusively? Why do they insist upon rattling the chains by which they lead their husbands until they call public attention to them?

Think of the women you know who always say “MY house.” “MY car.” “MY children.” Who always walk ahead of their husbands and point out a seat, and say, “John, sit there,” and who always tell John where to get on and where to get off! And think how all the rest of us are embarrassed for poor John! Believe me, dirty linen should be washed at home, and family quarrels staged there. That is one of the main things for which homes are designed.

XX

SHOULD WOMEN TELL?

I get a great many letters from women who write that there is a dark stain on their past life. In the headstrong folly of youth they took a step down the primrose path, then repented of their sin, and turned their back upon it, and laid hold upon righteousness.

Sometimes nobody knows of the slip but the girl herself and the man who was her partner in wrong-doing. Sometimes a woman who had mired her skirts to the knees has washed them clean with her tears of remorse, and had the courage to build anew her life in some place where her early escapades are unknown.

Then love comes to these women. Good men offer them marriage and an honorable place in society. And the question they ask is, shall they tell these men the story of their life before they marry them, or bury the secret in their heart, and leave the matter on the knees of the gods?

This is a problem no human wisdom can solve, for, so far as the woman is concerned, it is a case in which she will be damned if she does, and damned if she doesn’t. Her chances of getting happiness—or misery—through opening up her skeleton closet and exhibiting its contents to the man who has asked her to be his wife are about even, with the odds for happiness slightly in favor of keeping the lid clamped down good and hard on her secret.

The question of right does not enter into the matter unless you institute a prematrimonial confessional in which men shall bare their souls as well as women. There is no more real reason why a woman should tell a man every detail of her past than there is why he should tell her of every time that he has strayed off of the straight and narrow path.

It is true that a couple who knew the worst of each other would start out their life together on a firm foundation of honest understanding, but nobody can claim that it would make for their felicity, or increase their affection for each other. On the contrary, they would have swept away every illusion. They would have destroyed the faith of each in the other, and they would have called into being an evil spirit, a ghost out of the past, that they could not banish, and that would forever stand between them.

Men have had the wisdom to perceive this. They realize that what a woman doesn’t know doesn’t hurt her, but that the thing that she does know she worries herself to death over, and so few men are foolish enough to furnish a wife with a working diagram of their past lives with which she can torture herself, and them. They draw a discreet veil over episodes that are best forgotten, anyway, and deal only in glittering generalities in referring to their gay bachelor days. Moreover, women are sensible enough to let it go at that. No woman wants her husband to tell her things that stab her every time she thinks of them, and that eat like a canker into her memory.

It is only when the case is reversed, and when it is the woman who has a blot upon her past, that she wonders if it is the right thing, the honorable thing, to tell the man who wants to marry her about it. Of course, the woman is bound in this by the double code of morals, which makes one standard for the woman and another for the man, and that, humorously enough, makes a husband feel that he has been exceedingly ill-used if he discovers that his wife has a past that matches his own.

Therefore, because she is afraid that in future years her husband may find out about her past life, or else driven by her conscience, or for the sheer relief of sharing her burden with another, the woman nearly always tells everything to the man before marriage. Sometimes it drives him from her. Sometimes he loves her enough to marry her, in spite of her revelations.

But, while he forgives, he never forgets. Always he is haunted by the memories of what she has revealed. He never trusts her, never wholly believes in her, and he has to be a bigger-souled man than most men are if he does not reproach her with her past, and use it as a whip of scorpions to scourge her with when he is angry with her.

Of course, when either a man’s or a woman’s past life has in it some sinister curse that reaches out and lays a hand on the future of the one he or she marries, he or she is bound in honor to tell the other one about it. But when there is nothing of this kind, nothing but a youthful folly, a mistake, a blunder in the dark, bitterly repented of and lived down, it seems to me the part of wisdom for both men and women to forego post-mortems, and to wash the slate clean and make a fresh start.

What they have done does not matter so much as what they are going to do. And it often happens that just because a man or woman has stumbled in the past they walk the more carefully among the pitfalls of life, and that out of the sorrows and repentance for their sins they have brought a tenderness, a compassion, a forbearance and an understanding that makes them better men and women than the vast majority of those who have lived blameless lives.

Confession is always weakness. The brave soul keeps its own secrets, and takes its own punishment in silence. It takes a strong man or woman to keep from blabbing, but it pays never to tell anything that you do not wish the world to know.

XXI

DOMESTIC BOREDOM

The thing that oftenest makes marriage a failure is its dulness. The real specter on the hearth is that awful silence. It is because husbands and wives have nothing interesting to say to each other that they quarrel. It is no joke, it is a sad truth, that in any theater or restaurant you can spot the married couples at a first glance. They are the couples who are sitting up reading the program through from cover to cover between the acts, or are apparently memorizing the menu while the waiter brings their order. The alert, interesting, smiling people who are gayly chatting together are the unwed, or those who are talking to other people’s husbands and wives.

Let even a bore drop into a droopy, dejected family circle that has been yawning itself to death and everybody brightens up and the stream of conversation which had apparently dried up at its source begins to flow again. Two may be company and three a crowd before marriage, but generally after marriage two is gobs of silence and three a godsend.

Yet the majority of people marry for companionship. Before marriage they could never get enough of each other’s society, and they esteemed each other perfect spellbinders. How is it, then, that they get so fed up on each other’s company that they sit up like mutes in the solitude of their homes? Why is it that, apart from fault-finding and spats and complaints about the servants and the tradesmen and bulletins about the children, there is so little family conversation; practically none that is interesting and cheerful and inspiring? You would think that a husband and wife who have all interests in common could never talk themselves out. But they do, and they come to the place where they take refuge behind the evening paper or in solitaire to save themselves from the pretense of even having to maintain the appearance of keeping up social intercourse.

Wives lay the blame for this state of affairs on their husbands. They say, heaven knows, that they would be glad enough to talk, but that you can’t maintain a conversation with a person who always grunts by way of reply, and who could give a clam on ice points on silence and then beat it at the game. Men retort that they have exhausted their conversational powers during business hours, and they desire to rest their vocal cords at home. Nevertheless, it is observable that if somebody interesting happens to call, or they go out to dinner, the very man who was silent at home finds plenty to say.

Now there are several reasons why there is so little conversation in the home. The first reason is because home talk is so often unpleasant. Women, especially, are prone to flavor it with gloom. They like to recite the litany of the day’s mischances. They spoil the flavor of a dinner by telling how much it cost. They bring on a scene with a child by telling of its naughtiness. They thrash over their old grievances because they can’t have what richer women have.

All of this gets on the husband’s nerves, and he retorts by saying a few pithy things about what a fool a man is to marry and burden himself with a family and what a poor manager his wife is, and he gives a few knocks to the dinner for good measure. After which conversation naturally languishes.

Another reason that there is little conversation at home is because it is dangerous. Experience teaches us that we have to watch our tongues and delete our home talk if we want to save ourselves from endless trouble.

A man hates to lie to his wife about what he does. He would enjoy telling her all about the poker game he stayed downtown for last night, and the funny things the boys said and did, but he does not do it because well he knows that the price of such an indiscreet revelation would be to have her nagging him about it forever and a day. A wife would just love to tell her husband about her adventures in buying a new hat, and how she fell for the twenty-five-dollar one instead of the fifteen-dollar one she meant to buy. But she is well aware that she would never hear the last of her extravagance if she did. So they both keep silent.

There is little home conversation because nobody is interested, and nobody pretends to be, in what you say. In the family circle nobody listens. Nobody laughs at your jokes. Nobody sees the points of your merry cracks. Try to tell a good story, and somebody is sure to remark that they have heard it before, and that it is an ancient wheeze. If you had discovered the North Pole and were relating your hairbreadth adventures in reaching it by airplane, somebody would interrupt at the most breathless moment to say that the iceman forgot to deliver the ice yesterday.

Wives won’t listen even when their husbands try to tell them about their hopes and plans and ambitions in their careers. And when a woman tries to talk to her husband about the things that are of vital interest to her he falls asleep and snores in her face.

And that is why conversation is a lost art in the family circle.

XXII

TO MARRY OR NOT TO MARRY?

A young woman once said to me:

“I am, as you know, the private secretary of the head of a very big business concern. I get a generous salary. My hours are easy. My employer, who is an elderly man, is one of the finest men in the world, and treats me with every courtesy, kindness and consideration. I feel it a privilege to be in daily contact with such a brilliant mind as he has. I love my work. I have what they call in men a business head. To me there is no other romance so fascinating as the romance of commerce; no game so absorbing as the business game. And it thrills me to the finger tips to know that I have a part, even if it is a small one, in this great adventure that sends men and ships to the uttermost parts of the earth and that gambles for fortunes.

“It gratifies my vanity to know that I have worked up from the bottom to my present fine position, and it pleases my ambition to know that I can climb still higher, and that every year I will be more efficient and more valuable to my employer. I enjoy the money I make, and the luxuries it brings me, as only a woman can who comes of a poor family, and whose girlhood has been barren of all the pretty things that girls crave. I find a lot of solid satisfaction in watching my bank account grow, knowing that, if I keep on with my job for a few years, I will have put by enough to safeguard my old age.

“So far, so good. If I were going to remain perpetually on the sunny side of forty, I would ask no life better than that of the successful business woman. But the dread hour will strike for me, as it does for all other women, and I am wondering if, when it does, I will not find myself a lonely old woman, and wish that I had married and had children.

“I am thirty now, and I have got to decide the question in the next year or two. Shall I give up my mahogany desk for a gas range? Shall I forfeit my fat pay envelope for a job where I shall have to toil ten times as hard for only my board and clothes? Shall I give up the occupation for which I spent years in preparing myself, for which I have talent and which is a joy for me to perform, for domestic service which I loathe, for which I have no aptitude and in which I am utterly unskilled?

“When I see my sister shabby, bedraggled, overworked, with her crying babies and grouchy husband I feel like clinging to my good, soft, easy office position with both hands. Then rises that specter of the future in my pathway, and I wonder if in staying single I will miss the best that life has to give to a woman, and if I will regret it if I refuse to follow the traditional career of my sex.

“Of course, I know that there are women who try to have their cake, and eat it, too; who grab matrimony with one hand, and hold on to their jobs with the other, but my observation is that they always fall between the stools. They are failures both as business women and as wives and mothers, for to succeed in anything you have to give everything that is in you to it.

“No woman is of much use in an office when nine-tenths of her brain and all of her interest are back home in a cradle and she is worrying over whether a hired nurse is giving the baby its milk. Nor can any woman who comes back home at night, with a worn-out body and jangled nerves, be anybody’s ideal of a wife and mother.

“So as far as I am concerned I have to decide the question which I am going to be, a business woman or a domestic woman, before I take the fatal step, and for the life of me I can’t make up my mind which to do. To marry or not to marry, that is the problem that I am acquiring gray hairs and wrinkles debating.

“Of course, if a fairy prince should come along and say, ‘Come and be my queen, and ride beside me in my limousine and tour the world with me on my yacht,’ I should doff my Cinderella working suit and put on my glass slippers, and step out with him.

“But it is only in novels that millionaires espouse poor working girls. The men who come a-courting me are just ordinary young chaps on small salaries, whose wives will have to do their own cooking, and wear hand-me-downs.

“Nor would there be any difficulty in settling the question if I had an overwhelming passion for some man. Then I would cry, ‘All for love and my job well lost!’ and a two-by-four flat would look better to me than to be president of the greatest corporation in the world. But I am not really in love. I have merely an affection for a certain chap that I might possibly cultivate into a warmer emotion if I decided that it was better, after all, to marry.

“But it is cruel, isn’t it, that a woman has to choose between marriage and her career? When a man marries he merely annexes a home and wife and children to the pleasures and interests of his work, but a woman has to sacrifice one or the other. And I don’t know which one to choose.”

“And whichever way you decide, you will be apt to regret it,” I replied consolingly.

XXIII

WOMAN’S GREATEST GIFT

A man told me the other day that he had not married until he was forty-five years old because he was determined not to marry any woman who did not have a sense of humor, and it took him that long to find one.

A wise man! A very Solomon among men! May his tribe increase! It is a million times more important for a woman to have a well-developed funny bone than it is for her to have a Grecian profile, yet when men go to marry they pick out a girl for a wife because she has melting black eyes, or soulful blue eyes, without ever once observing whether the said eyes look on the funny side of life or take a dark, pessimistic, bilious view of it. Which is one of the reasons that domestic life is no merry jest to the average husband.

A sense of humor is desirable in a man, but it is absolutely essential for a woman to have a sense of humor if she is to be an agreeable life partner, because a woman’s existence is made up of little, nagging things, at which she must either laugh or cry, and if she can’t laugh them off, they get on her nerves, and she goes to pieces.

It is the neurotic, haggard women, who can’t see a joke even after it is diagrammed for them, who fill the insane asylums and the sanitariums and divorce courts. The women who wear the smile that won’t come off, and whose laughter is set on a hair trigger, get to be fair, fat and forty, and you couldn’t pry their husbands away from them with a crowbar. It is the lack of a sense of humor that causes women to make tragedies instead of comedies out of trifles.

Take the servant trouble, for instance. Women worry themselves sick over the mistakes of a green maid, and it never occurs to them that the very blunders that they are shedding tears over are screamingly funny contretemps that they pay out money to see imitated in a sketch on the vaudeville stage.

Of course, no one wants the soup to be seasoned with sugar instead of salt, nor the waste-paper basket to be put on the mantel as a parlor ornament as a perpetual thing, but the mistress who can get a laugh instead of a sick headache out of the mistakes of her Norah or Dinah, fresh from Ireland or the cotton fields, saves her own face and that of the maid whom she later trains into being a good servant.

Moreover, a woman with a sense of humor can take the curse off of even bad cooking, for there is not one of us who would not rather sit down to a boiled dinner with a jolly woman, full of good stories and anecdotes, than to attend a banquet where the hostess is gloomy and peevish and whiny, and who frets with her children and spats with her husband.

Whether a woman makes a success or failure of matrimony depends altogether on whether she has a sense of humor or not. If she can see her husband as one of the most mirth-provoking, side-splitting, uproarious human jokes that nature ever perpetrated she will be happy, and he will bless heaven on his knees for having given him the paragon of wives. But if she sees him as an Awful Problem, or a subject for reformation, neither one of them will ever know a happy hour, and the marriage will either end in a divorce court or a long endurance contest.

The women who wreck marriages are the ones who take their husbands seriously, and who get tragic every time their husbands look at another woman, or play a little poker, or fail to come home at the appointed hour, and who weep when their husbands forget an anniversary, or fail in some little attention they consider their due. The women who keep their husbands enslaved from the altar to the grave are the women who laugh with their husband over their little faults and peculiarities. They make a joke of their husband’s weakness for a pretty face; they have a dozen funny stories to tell about how they helped their husbands out of scrapes, and, instead of feeling ill-used and assuming the pose of a domestic martyr when their husbands forget their birthdays, they go out and buy themselves a particularly nice present, which they pay for without a murmur because they know that a wife with a sense of humor is worth anything she costs.

A sense of humor is even more necessary to a mother than it is to a wife. The humorless woman takes her children too tragically. They wear her out, and she alienates them from her by her ceaseless nagging because she thinks that every little foolish thing they do is full of direful significance. The mother with a sense of humor knows that youth is as subject to certain follies as it is to the mumps and the measles and the whooping cough, and that it must go through these experiences, as it did through the cycle of infantile diseases, but that they are not fatal if they are carefully watched.