CHAPTER LVIII

STATE OF EUROPE WITH REGARD TO MARRIAGE

So far we have only treated the question of marriage according to theory;[1] we are now to treat it according to the facts.

Which of all countries is that in which there are the most happy marriages? Without dispute, Protestant Germany(52).

I extract the following fragment from the diary of Captain Salviati, without changing a single word in it:--

"Halberstadt, _June 23rd_, 1807.... Nevertheless, M. de Bülow is absolutely and openly in love with Mademoiselle de Feltheim; he follows her about everywhere, always, talks to her unceasingly, and very often keeps her yards away from us. Such open marks of affection shock society, break it up--and on the banks of the Seine would pass for the height of indecency. The Germans think much less than we do about what breaks up society; indecency is little more than a conventional evil. For five years M. de Bülow has been paying court in this way to Mina, whom he has been unable to marry owing to the war. All the young ladies in society have their lover, and he is known to everyone. Among all the German acquaintances of my friend M. de Mermann(53) there is not a single one who has not married for love.

"Mermann, his brother George, M. de Voigt, M. de

[Pg 246] Lazing, etc. He has just given me the names of a dozen of them.

"The open and passionate way in which these lovers pay their court to their mistresses would be the height of indecency, absurdity and shame in France.

"Mermann told me this evening, as we were returning from the _Chasseur Vert_, that, among all the women of his very numerous family, he did not suppose there was a single one who had deceived her husband. Allowing that he is wrong about half of them, it is still a singular country.

"His shady proposal to his sister-in-law, Madame de Munichow, whose family is about to die out for want of male heirs and its very considerable possessions revert to the crown, coldly received, but merely with: 'Let's hear no more of that.'

"He tells the divine Philippine (who has just obtained a divorce from her husband, who only wanted to sell her to his Sovereign) something about it in very covert terms. Unfeigned indignation, toned down in its expression instead of being exaggerated: 'Have you, then, no longer any respect for our sex? I prefer to think, for the sake of your honour, that you're joking.'

"During a journey to the Brocken with this really beautiful woman, she reclined on his shoulder while asleep or pretending to sleep; a jolt threw her somewhat on to the top of him, and he put his arm round her waist; she threw herself into the other corner of the carriage. He doesn't think that she is incorruptible, but he believes that she would kill herself the day after her mistake. What is certain is that he loved her passionately and that he was similarly loved by her, that they saw each other continually and that she is without reproach. But the sun is very pale at Halberstadt, the Government very meddling, and these two persons very cold. In their most passionate interviews Kant and Klopstock were always of the party.

[Pg 247] "Mermann told me that a married man, convicted of adultery, could be condemned by the courts of Brunswick to ten years' imprisonment; the law has fallen into disuse, but at least ensures that people do not joke about this sort of affair. The distinction of being a man with a past is very far from being such an advantage here as it is in France, where you can scarcely refuse it a married man in his presence without insulting him.

"Anyone who told my Colonel or Ch... that they no longer have women since their marriage would get a very poor reception.

"Some years ago a woman of this country, in a fit of religious fervour, told her husband, a gentleman of the Court of Brunswick, that she had deceived him for six years together. The husband, as big a fool as his wife, went to tell the news to the Duke; the gallant was obliged to resign all his employments and to leave the country in twenty-four hours, under a threat from the Duke to put the laws in motion. "

"HALBERSTADT, _July 7th_, 1807.

"Husbands are not deceived here, 'tis true--but ye gods, what women! Statues, masses scarcely organic! Before marriage they are exceedingly attractive, graceful as gazelles, with quick tender eyes that always understand the least hint of love. The reason is that they are on the look out for a husband. So soon as the husband is found, they become absolutely nothing but getters of children, in a state of perpetual adoration before the begetter. In a family of four or five children there must always be one of them ill, since half the children die before seven, and in this country, immediately one of the babies is ill, the mother goes out no more. I can see that they find an indescribable pleasure in being caressed by their children. Little by little they lose all their ideas. It is the same at Philadelphia. There girls of the wildest and most innocent gaiety become, in less

[Pg 248] than a year, the most boring of women. To have done with the marriages of Protestant Germany--a wife's dowry is almost nil because of the fiefs. Mademoiselle de Diesdorff, daughter of a man with an income of forty thousand francs, will have a dowry of perhaps two thousand crowns (seven thousand five hundred francs).

"M. de Mermann got four thousand crowns with his wife.

"The rest of the dowry is payable in vanity at the Court. 'One could find among the middle class,' Mermann told me, 'matches with a hundred or a hundred and fifty thousand crowns (six hundred thousand francs instead of fifteen). But one could no longer be presented at Court; one would be barred all society in which a prince or princess appeared: _it's terrible._' These were his words, and they came from the heart.

"A German woman with the soul of Phi..., her intellect, her noble and sensitive face, the fire she must have had at eighteen (she is now twenty-seven), a woman such as this country produces, with her virtue, naturalness and no more than a useful little dose of religion--such a woman would no doubt make her husband very happy. But how flatter oneself that one would remain true to such insipid matrons?

"'But he was married,' she answered me this morning when I blamed the four years'silence of Corinne's lover, Lord Oswald. She sat up till three o'clock to read _Corinne_. The novel gave her profound emotion, and now she answers me with touching candour: 'But he was married.'

"Phi... is so natural, with so naive a sensibility, that even in this land of the natural, she seems a prude to the petty heads that govern petty hearts; their witticisms make her sick, and she in no way hides it.

"When she is in good company, she laughs like mad at the most lively jokes. It was she who told me the story of the young princess of sixteen, later on so well known.

[Pg 249] who often managed to make the officer on guard at her door come up into her rooms. "

SWITZERLAND

I know few families happier than those of the Oberland, the part of Switzerland that lies round Berne; and it is a fact of public notoriety (1816) that the girls there spend Saturday to Sunday nights with their lovers.

The fools who know the world, after a voyage from Paris to Saint Cloud, will cry out; happily I find in a Swiss writer confirmation of what I myself[2] saw during four months.

"An honest peasant complained of certain losses he had sustained in his orchard; I asked him why he didn't keep a dog: 'My daughters would never get married.' I did not understand his answer; he told me he had had such a bad-tempered dog that none of the young men dared climb up to the windows any longer.

"Another peasant, mayor of his village, told me in praise of his wife, that when she was a girl no one had had more _Kilter_ or _Wächterer_--that is, had had more young men come to spend the night with her.

"A Colonel, widely esteemed, was forced, while crossing the mountains, to spend the night at the bottom of one of the most lonely and picturesque valleys in the country. He lodged with the first magistrate in the valley, a man rich and of good repute. On entering, the stranger noticed a young girl of sixteen, a model of gracefulness, freshness and simplicity: she was the daughter of the master of the house. That night there was a village ball; the stranger paid court to the girl, who was really strikingly beautiful. At last, screwing up courage, he ventured to ask her whether he couldn't 'keep watch' with her. 'No,' answered the girl, 'I share a room with my cousin, but I'll come myself to yours.' You can judge

[Pg 250] of the confusion this answer gave him. They had supper, the stranger got up, the girl took a torch and followed him into his room; he imagined the moment was at hand. 'Oh no,' she said simply, 'I must first ask Mamma's permission.' He would have been less staggered by a thunderbolt! She went out; his courage revived; he slipped into these good folks' parlour, and listened to the girl begging her mother in a caressing tone to grant her the desired permission; in the end she got it. 'Eh, old man,' said the mother to her husband who was already in bed, 'd'you allow Trineli to spend the night with the Colonel?' 'With all my heart,' answers the father, 'I think I'd lend even my wife to such a man.' 'Right then, go,' says the mother to Trineli; 'but be a good girl, and don't take off your petticoat...' At day-break, Trineli, respected by the stranger, rose still virgin. She arranged the bedclothes, prepared coffee and cream for her partner and, after she had breakfasted with him, seated on his bed, cut off a little piece of her _broustpletz_ (a piece of velvet going over the breast). 'Here,' she said, 'keep this souvenir of a happy night; I shall never forget it.--Why are you a Colonel?' And giving him a last kiss, she ran away; he didn't manage to see her again.[3] Here you have the absolute opposite of French morals, and I am far from approving them."

Were I a legislator, I would have people adopt in France, as in Germany, the custom of evening dances. Three times a week girls would go with their mothers to a ball, beginning at seven and ending at midnight, and demanding no other outlay but a violin and a few glasses of water. In a neighbouring room the mothers, maybe a little jealous of their daughters' happy education,

[Pg 251] would play boston; in a third, the fathers would find papers and could talk politics. Between midnight and one o'clock all the families would collect together and return to the paternal roof. Girls would get to know young men; they would soon come to loathe fatuity and the indiscretions it is responsible for--in fact they would choose themselves husbands. Some girls would have unhappy love-affairs, but the number of deceived husbands and unhappy matches would diminish to an immense degree. It would then be less absurd to attempt to punish infidelity with dishonour. The law could say to young women: "You have chosen your husband--be faithful to him." In those circumstances I would allow the indictment and punishment by the courts of what the English call criminal conversation. The courts could impose, to the profit of prisons and hospitals, a fine equal to two-thirds of the seducer's fortune and imprisonment for several years.

A woman could be indicted for adultery before a jury. The jury should first declare that the husband's conduct had been irreproachable.

A woman, if convicted, could be condemned to imprisonment for life. If the husband had been absent more than two years, the woman could not be condemned to more than some years' imprisonment. Public morals would soon model themselves on these laws and would perfect them.[4]

[Pg 252] And then the nobles and the priests, still regretting bitterly the proper times of Madame de Montespan or Madame du Barry, would be forced to allow divorce.[5]

There would be in a village within sight of Paris an asylum for unfortunate women, a house of refuge into which, under pain of the galleys, no man besides the doctor and the almoner should enter. A woman who wished to get a divorce would be bound, first of all, to go and place herself as prisoner in this asylum; there she would spend two years without going out once. She could write, but never receive an answer.

A council composed of peers of France and certain magistrates of repute would direct, in the woman's name, the proceedings for a divorce and would regulate the pension to be paid to the institution by the husband. A woman who failed in her plea before the courts would be allowed to spend the rest of her life in the asylum. The Government would compensate the administration of the asylum with a sum of two thousand francs for each woman who sought its refuge. To be received in the asylum, a woman must have had a dowry of over twenty thousand francs. The moral _régime_ would be one of extreme severity.

After two years of complete seclusion from the world, a divorced woman could marry again.

Once arrived at this point, Parliament could consider

[Pg 253] whether, in order to infuse in girls a spirit of emulation, it would not be advisable to allow the sons a share of the paternal heritage double that of their sisters. The daughters who did not find husbands would have a share equal to that of the male children. It may be remarked, by the way, that this system would, little by little, destroy the only too inconvenient custom of marriages of convenience. The possibility of divorce would render useless such outrageous meanness.

At various points in France, and in certain poor villages, thirty abbeys for old maids should be established. The Government should endeavour to surround these establishments with consideration, in order to console a little the sorrows of the poor women who were to end their lives there. They should be given all the toys of dignity.

But enough of such chimeras!

[1] The author had read a chapter called "Dell' amore," in the Italian translation of the _Idéologie_ of M. de Tracy(51). In that chapter the reader will find ideas incomparable, in philosophical importance, with anything he can find here.

[2] _Principes philosophiques du Colonel Weiss_, 7 ed.,Vol. II. p. 245.

[3] I am fortunate to be able to describe in the words of another some extraordinary facts that I have had occasion to observe. Certainly, but for M. de Weiss, I shouldn't have related this glimpse of foreign customs. I have omitted others equally characteristic of Valencia and Vienna.

[4] _The Examiner_, an English paper, when giving a report of the Queen's case (No. 662, September 3rd, 1820), adds:--

"We have a system of sexual morality, under which thousands of women become mercenary prostitutes whom virtuous women are taught to scorn, while virtuous men retain the privilege of frequenting these very women, without its being regarded as anything more than a venial offence."

In the land of Cant there is something noble in the courage that dares speak the truth on this subject, however trivial and obvious it be; it is all the more meritorious in a poor paper, which can only hope for success if bought by the rich--and they look on the bishops and the Bible as the one safeguard of their fine feathers.

[5] Madame de Sévigné wrote to her daughter, December 23rd, 1671: "I don't know if you have heard that Villarceaux, when talking to the king of a post for his son, adroitly took the occasion to tell him, that there were people busy telling his niece (Mademoiselle de Rouxel) that his Majesty had designs on her; that if it were so, he begged his Majesty to make use of him; said that the affair would be better in his hands than in others, and that he would discharge it with success. The King began to laugh and said: 'Villarceaux, we are too old, you and I, to attack young ladies of fifteen.' And like a gallant man, he laughed at him and told the ladies what he had said." See Memoirs of Lauzun, Bezenval, Madame d'Épinay, etc., etc, I beg my readers not to condemn me altogether without re-reading these Memoirs.

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