CHAPTER XXI

THE ENGLISH WIFE

Her position--Family life less attractive and piquant in England than in France, but more solid--The English wife is the goddess of a beautiful home.

The Englishman is no doubt cut out to make colonies, but less to make love, for the simple reason that he does not know how to forget himself, and spends the greater part of his life standing sentry at the door of his dignity.

The Englishman loves in his own fashion, in a true and manly way, according to his peculiar organization, which enables him to bring to the choice of a wife the very same cool reflection, care and discernment that he brings to all the other actions of his life. In a word, he seldom allows himself to be 'carried away.'

This is a great superiority he has over the Frenchman, because this cool and reflective way of loving has established the English family on a most solid basis. The Englishman does not seek beauty in a wife. After being married he wants to enjoy a perfect peace of mind, and, to do him justice, I will add that money will seldom make him take a wife who does not possess those moral and intellectual qualities that are the foundation-stone of happiness in matrimonial life. A cheerful face will attract him much more than a beautiful one. It is a cheerful and useful companion he wants, not a legal mistress or a well-dressed doll.

His honeymoon lasts a month. When he settles at home, he prepares to keep his wife in order and discipline, and to give her occupations to fill up all her time--a house to keep and a large family to bring up. Devotion and friendship are nowhere deeper than in the English family, but poetry and piquancy shine by their absence. It is a prosy life among the masses of the people.

Among these masses, even the well-to-do masses, of the people (I don't mention the upper tens, who are alike all the world over) there is no privacy between them--why, very often, not even a dressing-room.

The 'nonsense,' as I once heard an Englishman call the poetry of matrimony, is soon knocked out of them. One says, 'Oh, that's all right. It is not a man; it's only my husband'; while the other says, 'I would not do this or that before a woman for all the world; but this is the wife: it's all right.' And it is that kind of life that so often causes Englishwomen of the middle class to appear so unattractive. The blame is to be laid at the door of their husbands. In love the Englishman is a little selfish. He forgets that the sweetest pleasures are those we give.

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When the French girl marries, she gains her liberty; when the English girl marries, she often loses hers (when the American girl marries, she retains hers). In France the wife is the friend and confidante of her husband and often his mistress. In England she is the mistress of the house only. And this is not always a sinecure; for she becomes something more than a house-keeper in point of rank, but at the same time something less, if we consider that no wages are due to her and that she cannot give notice to leave.

In England the wife is the partner of her husband at home only. In France she is his partner in business. It is she who keeps his books and his cash-box, and neither was ever entrusted to better guardianship.

An Englishman gives his wife so much a month for housekeeping and so much for dressing and pocket money. One morning he tells her they are going to remove to a sumptuous home. She did not know he was making his fortune. Or maybe he will tell her at breakfast: 'I have lost everything. We must go to Australia and start a new life.' She did not know they were on the way to ruin; so she merely replies: 'Very well, John. Give me time to put on my hat.'

When things are prosperous and matrimonial life happy, the Englishwoman makes the best of wives. Her mission, which she understands so well, is to cheer her husband in the comfort of his home and make him forget the worry, annoyance and heartburnings that beset him out of doors in his public, professional or commercial life; to provide for him a retreat in the soothing atmosphere of which he can find rest and renovated strength; to do the honours of his house with that liberality, that provident and large-hearted hospitality, which is only to be found in England. Such is the mission of the English wife. 'The companions of John Bull are beautiful, healthy girls, perhaps a little too bold; virtuous wives, perhaps a trifle too respected; excellent mothers, perhaps a little too neglected; above all, women whose ingenious attention to all the minor comforts of existence can turn the humblest cottage into a little palace of order, cleanliness and well-being.'[1]

The more I examine the constitution of the English family, the more deeply convinced I become that it is the very pedestal on which stand solid the prosperity and the greatness of the British Empire.

[1] 'John Bull and his Island.'