Part 23

Advocates of so-called “wisdom” marriages are fond of pointing out cases of unhappy married life, based originally on free Choice. But free Choice by no means always implies Love. Its motives are often pecuniary, or social; and in these cases the marriage actually comes under the head of “wisdom marriages,” whose champions are thus boxing their own ears. Besides, we must remember Byron’s words, that “many a man thinks he marries by choice who only marries by accident.” If a man marries his Rosaline before he has met his Juliet, he has only himself or his bad luck to blame, not Love.

The frequency with which runaway “love-matches” end unhappily, is adduced as another argument in favour of wisdom marriages. Two things are here forgotten: that in nineteen runaway matches out of twenty, the predominant passion is frivolity, not Love; and that quite a considerable proportion of unions not preceded by an elopement end unhappily; but being less romantic they are not so much talked about.

“Wisdom” marriages based on parental choice are those which have prevailed in the past: and we have seen how beautifully they coincided with woman’s degradation, ignorance, and social debasement.

Wisdom marriages are incompatible with Courtship, which becomes a superfluous preliminary to marriage. Modern methods of Courtship and engagement ordinarily prolong this period to about a year or two. This is the honeymoon, not of marriage, but of life itself, the time when earth is a paradise. During these two years the soul makes more progress in refinement, maturity, and insight than during any other _decade_ of life. Shall all this happiness, all this refining influence, be thrown away with Love?

Compatibility of temper is the most important of all prerequisites to a happy marriage. Should Love be allowed to find out during Courtship if there is such a compatibility, before it is too late, or shall the inadequate judgment of parents unite two souls with as much mutual affinity as oil and water?

Self-sacrifice for their children is considered the noblest of parental traits. Were Schopenhauer right in claiming that in Love-matches the parents sacrifice their individual happiness to the wellbeing of their children—would not this be an additional motive for abhorring wisdom marriages, in which the interests of the parents alone are consulted?

MARRIAGE HINTS

It would be foolish to deny, on the other hand, that Reason should be consulted as much as possible as long as Love allows it to have the floor for a moment. Thus men might, before it is too late, have an eye to Benjamin Franklin’s advice in regard to large families and the age of marriage.

Mr. F. W. Holland of Boston has collected some statistics concerning which Mr. Galton says, “One of his conclusions was that morality is more often found among members of large families than among those of small ones. It is reasonable to expect this would be the case, owing to the internal discipline among members of large families, and to the wholesome sustaining and restraining effects of family pride and family criticism. Members of small families are apt to be selfish, and when the smallness of the family is due to the deaths of many of its members at early ages, it is some evidence either of weakness of the family constitution, or of deficiency of common sense or of affection on the part of the parents in not taking better care of them. Mr. Holland quotes in his letter to me a piece of advice by Franklin to a young man in search of a wife, ‘to take one out of a bunch of sisters,’ and a popular saying that kittens brought up with others make the best pets, because they have learned to play without scratching. Sir W. Gull has remarked that those candidates for the Indian Civil Service who are members of large families are on the whole the strongest.”

A second bit of advice given by Franklin is perhaps less unquestionable: “From the marriages that have fallen under my observation,” he says, "I am rather inclined to think that early ones stand the best chances of happiness. The temper and habits of the young are not become so stiff and uncomplying as when more advanced in life: they form more easily to each other, and hence many occasions of disgust are removed.... ‘Late children,’ says the Spanish proverb, ‘are early orphans.’ With us in America (1768) marriages are generally in the morning of life; our children are therefore educated and settled in the world by noon; and thus, our business being done, we have an afternoon and evening of cheerful leisure to ourselves.... By these early marriages we are blessed with more children; and from the mode among us founded by nature, every mother suckling and nursing her own child [1768], more of them are raised. Thence the swift progress of population among us, unparalleled in Europe."

“Marriages,” says Theodore Parker, “are best of dissimilar materials;” and Coleridge remarks, similarly: “You may depend upon it that a slight contrast of character is very material to happiness in marriage.” But would it be possible to find two individuals who did not present “a slight contrast of character”? Coleridge apparently did not think much of the average conjugal union of his day: “To the many of both sexes I am well aware,” he says, “this Eden of matrimony is but a kitchen-garden, a thing of profit and convenience, in an even temperature between indifference and liking.” What a married person wants is “a soul-mate as well as a house or yoke-mate.”

Young men are often warned not to marry for beauty, because it is but skin-deep. But surely a millimetre of beauty is worth more than a yard of ugliness, though whitewashed with rank, money, or general utility. “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.”

OLD MAIDS

One way in which Romantic Love fulfils its mission of increasing the amount of Personal Beauty in the world, is by _eliminating ugly and masculine women as Old Maids_, and thus preventing them from transmitting their characteristics to the next generation. Were it not for the fact that the average man is quite devoid of æsthetic taste and incapable of ardent Romantic Love, and that therefore considerations of wealth and social advantages guide him in his choice of a wife, _ugly_ women would rarely be found outside the ranks of Old Maids. As it is, it happens only too often that dowerless beautiful women are condemned to live and die in single blessedness, while the ugly people fill the world with photographic copies of themselves.

Why is it that every refined man feels an instinctive aversion to _masculine_ women? Because a masculine woman is an exception to the laws of nature, a _lusus naturæ_, a monstrosity. We find even among the lower animals that the females differ widely, as a rule, in traits and appearance from the males—sometimes so much so that there are instances on record of females and males having been for a time supposed to belong to different species; and the differences grow greater the more the sexual functions are developed and specialised. Yet Amazons occur even among animals. “Characters common to the male,” says Darwin, “are occasionally developed in the female _when she grows old or becomes diseased_, as, for instance, when the common hen assumes the flowing tail-feathers, hackles, combs, spurs, voice, and even _pugnacity_ of the cock.”

Among the warlike Greeks, who knew only masculine or mono-sexual love, Amazons were naturally esteemed, as they did not clash with their feminine ideal. “How popular a subject the Amazons were for sculptors,” says Grote, “we learn from the statement of Pliny that the most distinguished sculptors executed Amazons, and that this subject was the only one upon which a direct comparison could be made between them.” But the progress of time, as we have seen, has more and more differentiated men and women, in appearance and traits of character; and the modern ideal of woman is exclusively feminine, _i.e._ devoid of hackles, spurs, cock-a-doodle-doo, and pugnacity. Hence the political Virago movement is an evil which will never make any progress, thanks to the constant elimination of masculine women through that adorable process of Sexual Selection known as Modern Love.

Masculine women are always condemned to bury their unwomanly proclivities with their spinster-selves, unless they are very rich, or unless they can find a correspondingly effeminate man who wishes to neutralise his abnormalities in his children by marrying a spouse whose faults are an excess in the opposite direction. In such a case a virago may possibly even inspire Romantic Love, _mirabile dictu!_

An ugly woman, on the other hand, need never despair of finding a husband; she has at least eight chances of getting married. In the first place, she may, like a masculine woman, inspire true Love in a man whose faults are the opposite of hers; secondly, she may fall in love with a man of faultless proportions, and while in Love her features will be so transfigured and beautified that he cannot help returning her Love; thirdly, she may meet a man who, from want of æsthetic taste, prefers a chromo to a Titian; or a fourth, who would rather marry an amiable and useful ugly girl than a spoiled beauty. Wealth and social position supply two more resources. Accident may favour her, through the absence of prettier rivals, giving no opportunities for odious comparisons; and, finally, she may meet an elderly bachelor who has wearied of his single blessedness and longs for double strife.

As for those Old Maids who are neither ugly nor masculine, some of them are quondam coquettes who practised their arts just one season too long and “got left” in consequence; others are girls whom silly methods of chaperonage or ill-luck have prevented from making the acquaintance of men whom they could have respected and loved; so that it is often the most refined and intelligent women who are thus doomed to remain single because they are unwilling to marry beneath their station, socially or intellectually. They form that class of whom De Quincey says, that they “combine more intelligence, cultivation, and thoughtfulness than any other in Europe—the class of unmarried women above twenty-five—an increasing class, women who, from mere dignity of character, have renounced all prospects of conjugal and parental life rather than descend into habits unsuitable to their birth.”

Women who are too ugly to inspire Love may nevertheless feel proud of being a class of Vestal Virgins who serve the cause of Love by abstaining from adding to the number of unattractive people in the world by hereditary transmission. On the other hand, Old Maids who are blessed with beauty, owe it to the cause of Love to make every effort, consistent with feminine modesty, to get married. Not only because their children will be beautiful, but because a woman who never marries can never experience the two emotions which do more than any others to ennoble and mature the feminine mind—conjugal and maternal love.

Those Old Maids, however, who have not yet passed their thirtieth year, may even claim that they represent the most perfect and advanced type of maidenhood, and look down on girls who marry before twenty-five as little better than savages. For it is well known that the age of marriage advances with civilisation. Among Australians and other savages girls marry at eleven, ten, or even nine years; among semi-civilised Egyptians, Hindoos, etc., the age is from twelve to fourteen; southern European peoples marry their girls between the ages of fifteen and eighteen; while with those nations who lead modern civilisation, the average age of marriage for a woman is now twenty-one, with a tendency to rise. Does it not follow from this, by inexorable logic, that girls who remain single at twenty-five or twenty-nine are forerunners of a still higher type of civilisation? and that the only trouble with them is that they are so far in advance of their age and civilisation? True, ungrateful man does not look upon them in that light; but herein they share the fate of all true greatness. There is one difference, however, between undervalued men of genius and Old Maids: the men of genius admit they are in advance of their age, and are proud of it; the Old Maids never, at least, hardly ever.

In one of his most fascinating essays on _The Main Currents of Modern Literature_, the Danish critic, Dr. Georg Brandes, discusses the proper age of feminine Love in a manner which Old Maids will especially appreciate. He points out that Eleonore, the heroine of Benjamin Constant’s novel _Adolphe_, is the first specimen of a modern type subsequently made fashionable by Balzac and George Sand, namely, _the woman of thirty in Love_. Formerly, as Jules Janin remarks, the woman between thirty and forty years of age was lost for passion, for romance, and the drama; now she rules alone. The girl of sixteen, as adored by Racine, Shakspere, Molière, Voltaire, Ariosto, Byron, Lesage, Scott, is no more to be found. And Mme. Emile de Girardin thus attempts to defend Balzac: “Is it Balzac’s fault that the age of thirty to-day is the age of love? Balzac is compelled to depict passion where he finds it, and at this day it is not to be found in the heart of a girl of sixteen.”

So far as these remarks are true they afford a new confirmation of my assertions that true Romantic Love is dependent on a certain amount of intellectual power and maturity, and that in consequence man loves more deeply than woman at the age preceding marriage. In England and America novelists still persist in making women love at any age from eighteen, and they have a right to do so, because in these two countries women are well enough educated and experienced in life at eighteen to be able to love. In France girls receive such a superficial education that they are ordinarily quite impervious to any deep emotions before they are either Old Maids or married. But in most cases they are married before twenty without regard to their own wishes. And then happens what is indicated in Fuller’s aphorism: “It is to be feared that they who marry where they do not love, will love where they do not marry.” And hence it is that the only love depicted by French novelists and playwrights is the adulterous love of a faithless wife. Could anything more vividly illustrate the criminal absurdities of French education and the French system of chaperonage?

In France a girl is not even allowed to cross the street alone until she is willing to assume the name and with it the comparative freedom of an Old Maid. In Spain, the author of _Cosas de España_ tells us, Old Maids are rare because a girl generally accepts her first offer; and there are probably not many girls who do not receive at least one offer in their life—masculine women always excepted. In Russia, where women, according to Schweiger-Lerchenfeld, enjoy almost as much liberty as in America, a curious custom prevails by which a girl of uncertain age may escape the appellation of Old Maid. She may leave home and become lost for two or three years in Paris, London, or some other howling wilderness of humanity. Then she may return to her friends neither as maid nor wife, but as a widow. And it is “good form” in Russian society to accept this myth without asking for details.

Finally the important question remains: “What is an Old Maid?” That depends very much on individuals and the care they take of their Health and Beauty. Some women are Old Maids at twenty, the majority at thirty, and some not before forty; while those girls who will read the chapters on Personal Beauty in the last part of this treatise, and follow all the advice there given, will never become Old Maids at all, but will be gobbled up before twenty-three by eager bachelors previously considered hopeless cases of celibacy.

Even if it were possible to name a definite age as that when a girl begins to be an Old Maid, it would be a bit of useless information, because nobody ever knows how old a woman is. Often it is easier to tell a woman’s age by her conversation than by her looks: some incipient Old Maids constantly hint at their former numerous flirtations, which they never did while they really had them.

BACHELORS

“Pirates of Love who know no duty.”

Of all the brutes enumerated in the human branch of zoology the deliberate bachelor is the most unreasonable and selfish. Unreasonable, because he voluntarily deprives himself of connubial bliss, domestic comforts, and the prospect of being cheered and cared for in his old age by a family of loving children. Selfish, because at present the bread-winning arrangements are almost entirely framed for man’s convenience alone, wherefore it is his duty to support a wife.

Masculine selfishness, however, is not exclusively responsible for the rapid increase of bachelordom. The women themselves are largely at fault—in two ways. The modern tendency of concentrating population in large cities makes domestic life a much more expensive affair than it is in smaller towns or in rural districts; and at the same time women are gradually invading every sphere of masculine employment, thus reducing wages by competition and making it more and more difficult for a man to earn an income which allows him to marry. This aspect of the question, once before alluded to, is one which the advocates of Woman’s Rights are too apt to ignore. For the benefit of poor young girls, and widows, and old maids, it is, indeed, but just that various employments adapted to female hands should be thrown open to them and properly remunerated; but if the effect of this is simply and constantly to _increase_ the number of single poor women, by making marriage impossible, what is gained by the change? A certain amount of misery is inevitable in the world; and it seems better that it should be distributed where it will not imperil the popularity and possibility of marriage.

After all, self-supporting women must always be the exception, not the rule; for it is the destiny of the vast majority of women to be wives; and regarding these even Mr. Mill admits “it is not ... a desirable custom that the wife should contribute by her labour to the income of the family.” Now surely it would be most absurd, as some “strong-minded” women are trying to do, to arrange the educational scheme of all women so as to benefit the exceptional women who are excluded from matrimony. A thousand times more important is it to change woman’s education so as to enable her to look after her household affairs. It is by neglecting to do this that women supply the second cause for the increasing prevalence of Bachelors. Every man is expected to learn his trade properly before marriage; but woman’s proper occupation—the art of taking care of home and making it a paradise, is commonly supposed to be a thing that can be learned easily enough after marriage. Even when a woman is so wealthy that she is not obliged to do any housework at all, she should, like a ship’s captain, learn all about the duties of subordinates, else she will be unable to command them properly. A captain who displayed ignorance on any point before his sailors would lose their respect and attitude of prompt obedience; and it has been suggested that one reason why American women, especially, have so much trouble with their servants, is because they know so little about domestic economy that the servants, ignorant as they are, become arrogant because of their superior knowledge.

On the subject of woman’s sphere, Herbert Spencer has written words which should be hung in golden letters in every schoolroom: “When we remember that up from the lowest savagery civilisation has, among other results, brought about an increasing exemption of women from bread-winning labour, and in the highest societies they have become most restricted to domestic duties and the rearing of children; we may be struck by the anomaly that at the present time restriction to indoor occupations has come to be regarded as a grievance, and a claim is made to free competition with men in all outdoor occupations.... Any extensive change in the education of women, made with the view of fitting them for business and professions, would be mischievous. _If women comprehended all that is contained in the domestic sphere, they would ask no other._ If they could see all that is implied in the right education of children, to a full conception of which no man has yet risen, much less any woman, they would seek no higher function” (_Principles of Sociology_, vol. i. § 340).

When every woman has learned how to cultivate flowers and vegetables in her domestic garden at the same time, the millennium will have arrived, and the word Bachelor be found only in Dictionaries of Antiquities.

Women are sometimes held responsible in still another way for the continuance of Bachelors in single boredom, viz. by refusing their Love and breaking their hearts. But surely, as the shepherdess in _Don Quixote_ has so eloquently shown, it does not at all follow that if a man falls in Love with a woman, she must necessarily fall in Love with him; and if she does _not_ love him, it is her _duty_ not to marry him.

Besides, a broken heart is a very rare article in this world, and every nation has discovered a peculiar local remedy for it: the Spaniards by stabbing the girl who broke it; the Italians by annihilating the rival; the Germans by soaking the fragments in Rhine wine; the Englishmen by a change of air; and ultimately they all follow the example of the Frenchman who, on the day following the catastrophe, casts his eyes about for a new charmer; or, if they do not, but like a snail withdraw into their shell for the rest of their life, abusing all women as heartless, they are bigger fools than they look. What would you say of a fisherman who went out for a day’s sport and returned after an hour because the first trout that nibbled at the bait escaped?

It is the happy privilege of every Bachelor to have loved fully and deeply once in his life; but if his passion is not appreciated, it is his duty to try again; for, even as a stolen kiss is not a real kiss because it lacks the thrill of mutuality, so Love is not Love

“Till heart with heart in concord beats, And the lover is beloved.”—WORDSWORTH.

True, La Rochefoucauld says that “The pleasure of love is in loving;” and Shelley echoes the same sentiment in his _Prometheus_—

“All love is sweet, Given or returned.... They who inspire it most are fortunate As I am now; but those who feel it most, are happier still.”

Yet neither the English poet nor the French essayist appears to have fathomed the full depth of the problem. It is as incorrect to say, “the pleasure of love is in loving,” as to say, the pleasure of Love is in being loved. To be loved by one I do not love is a matter of complete indifference, except so far as my Pride or Pity may be involved. To love where I am not loved, or am left in uncertainty, is more of anguish than of delight. To attain the highest ecstacy of Love I must both be in Love and able to say at the same time, “she loves me.” Reciprocity is not only “that which alone gives stability to love,” as Coleridge remarks, but that without which consummate Love is impossible.

Apparent exceptions occur only when the illusion of being loved is so vividly kept up by the imagination as to counterfeit reality; as in the case of Eleonore, who “became so intoxicated with her Love that she saw it double and mistook her own feeling for that of both” (Dr. Brandes).