Читать книгу How to be Happy Though Married: Being a Handbook to Marriage - E. J. Hardy - Страница 10

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"How shall I know if I do choose the right?"—Shakespeare.

"God, the best maker of marriages, bless you!"—Ibid.

"And while thou livest, dear Kate, take a fellow of plain and uncoined constancy; for he perforce must do thee right, because he hath not the gift to woo in other places; for these fellows of infinite tongue, that can rhyme themselves into ladies' favours, they do always reason themselves out again. What! a speaker is but a prater; a rhyme is but a ballad. A good leg will fall; a straight back will stoop; a black beard will turn white; a curled pate will grow bald; a fair face will wither; a full eye will wax hollow; but a good heart, Kate, is the sun and the moon; or, rather, the sun, and not the moon; for it shines bright, and never changes, but keeps his course truly."—Ibid.

They that enter into the state of marriage cast a die of the greatest contingency, and yet of the greatest interest in the world, next to the last throw for eternity. Life or death, felicity or a lasting sorrow, are in the power of marriage. A woman, indeed, ventures most, for she hath no sanctuary to retire to from an evil husband; she must dwell upon her sorrow and hatch the eggs which her own folly or infelicity hath produced; and she is more under it, because her tormentor hath a warrant of prerogative, and the woman may complain to God, as subjects do of tyrant princes; but otherwise she hath no appeal in the causes of unkindness. And though the man can run from many hours of his sadness, yet he must return to it again; and when he sits among his neighbours he remembers the objection that is in his bosom, and he sighs deeply. "The boys and the pedlars and the fruiterers shall tell of this man when he is carried to his grave that he lived and died a poor, wretched person."

In these words Jeremy Taylor puts before men and women the issues of choice in matrimony. What, however, concerns us in this chapter is that "a woman ventures most." "Love is of man's life a thing apart, 'tis woman's whole existence." How important that a treasure which is dear as life itself should be placed in safe keeping! And yet so blind is love that defects often seem to be virtues, deformity assumes the style of beauty, and even hideous vices have appeared under an attractive form.

In Shakespeare's play Cleopatra speaks of an old attachment which she had lived to despise as having arisen in her "salad days," when she was green in judgment. In extreme youth love is especially blind, and for this, as well as for other reasons, girls, who are yet at school, do not consult their best interests when they allow love to occupy their too youthful minds. It prevents the enjoyment of happy years of maidenhood, and sometimes leads to marriage before the girl is fit, either physically, mentally, or domestically, for the cares of married life.

"I believe," says R. W. Dale, of Birmingham, "in falling in love. The imagination should be kindled and the heart touched; there should be enthusiasm and even romance in the happy months that precede marriage, and something of the enthusiasm and romance should remain to the very end of life, or else the home is wanting in its perfect happiness and grace. But take my word for it, solid virtues are indispensable to the security and happiness of a home."

You would not like to live with a liar, with a thief, with a drunkard, for twenty or thirty years. A lazy man will make but a weak band or support for his and your house; so will one deficient in fortitude—that is, the power to bear pain and trouble without whining. Beware of the selfish man, for though he may be drawn out of selfishness in the early weeks of courtship, he will settle back into it again when the wear and worry of life come on. And remember that a man may have the roots of some of these vices in him and yet be extremely agreeable and good-looking, dress well, and say very pretty and charming things. "How easy is it for the proper-false in women's waxen hearts to set their forms!"

In their haste to be married many women are too easily satisfied with the characters of men who may offer themselves as husbands. They aim at matrimony in the abstract; not the man, but any man. They would not engage a servant if all they knew of her were that she had, as a housemaid lately advertised, "a fortnight's character from her last place;" but with even less information as to their characters they will accept husbands and vow to love, honour, and obey them! In comparison how much more honourable and how much less unloved and unloving is the spinster's lot! Women marry simply for a home because they have not been trained to fight the battle of life for themselves, and because their lives are so dull and stagnant that they think any change must be for the better.

A friend—let us say Barlow—was describing to Jerrold the story of his courtship and marriage: how his wife had been brought up in a convent, and was on the point of taking the veil, when his presence burst upon her enraptured sight. Jerrold listened to the end of the story, and by way of comment said, "Ah! she evidently thought Barlow better than nun." When girls have been given work in the world they do not think that any husband is better than none, and they have not time to imagine themselves in love with the first man who proposes. How often is it the case that people think themselves in love when in fact they are only idle!

There are hearts all the better for keeping; they become mellower and more worth a woman's acceptance than the crude, unripe things that are sometimes gathered—as children gather green fruit—to the discomfort of those who obtain them. A husband may be too young to properly appreciate and take care of a wife. And yet perhaps the majority of girls would rather be a young man's slave than an old man's darling. "My dear," said a father to his daughter, "I intend that you should be married, but not that you should throw yourself away on any wild, worthless boy: you must marry a man of sober and mature age. What do you think of a fine, intelligent husband of fifty?" "I think two of twenty-five would be better, papa."

Prophecies as to the probable result of a marriage are as a rule little to be trusted. It was so in the case of the celebrated Madame Necker. She had been taken to Paris to live with a young widow, to whom Necker—a financier from Geneva—came to pay his addresses. The story goes that the widow, in order to rid herself of her admirer, got him to transfer his addresses to her young companion, saying to herself, "they will bore each other to death, that will give them something to do." The happy pair, however, had no such foreboding. "I am marrying a man," wrote the lady, "whom I should believe to be an angel, if his great love for me did not show his weakness." In his way the husband was equally satisfied. "I account myself as happy as it is possible for a man to be," he wrote to a mutual friend; and to the end of the chapter there was no flaw in that matrimonial life.

Never to marry a genius was the advice of Mrs. Carlyle. "I married for ambition. Carlyle has exceeded all that my wildest hopes ever imagined of him, and I am miserable." As the supply of geniuses is very limited, this advice may seem superfluous. It is not so, however, for there is enough and to spare of men who think that they are geniuses, and take liberties accordingly. These are very often only sons of fond but foolish mothers, who have persuaded them that they are not made of common clay, and that the girls who get them will be blessed. From such a blessing young women should pray to be delivered.

Perhaps it may be said that though it is easy to write about choosing a husband, for the majority of English girls, at least, there is but little choice in the matter. Dickens certainly told an American story—very American—of a young lady on a voyage, who, being intensely loved by five young men, was advised to "jump overboard and marry the man who jumped in after her." Accordingly, next morning the five lovers being on deck, and looking very devotedly at the young lady, she plunged into the sea. Four of the lovers immediately jumped in after her. When the young lady and four lovers were out again, she said to the captain, "What am I to do with them now, they are so wet?" "Take the dry one." And the young lady did, and married him. How different is the state of affairs on this side of the Atlantic, where, if a young woman is to be married, she must take not whom she will, but whom she can. "Oh me, the word choose! I may neither choose whom I would, nor refuse whom I dislike." But is it necessary to marry? Far better to have no husband than a bad one.

There is a great deal of human nature in the account which Artemus Ward gives of the many affecting ties which made him hanker after Betsy Jane. "Her father's farm jined our'n; their cows and our'n squencht their thurst at the same spring; our old mares both had stars in their forrerds; the measles broke out in both famerlies at nearly the same period; our parients (Betsy's and mine) slept reglarly every Sunday in the same meetin-house, and the nabers used to obsarve, 'How thick the Wards and Peasleys air!' It was a surblime site, in the spring of the year, to see our sevral mothers (Betsy's and mine) with their gowns pin'd up so thay couldn't sile 'em affecshunitly bilin sope together and aboozin the nabers."

In this matter more than in most others "we do not will according to our reason, we reason according to our will." True desire, the monition of nature, is much to be attended to. But always we are to discriminate carefully between true desire and false. The medical men tell us we should eat what we truly have an appetite for; but what we only falsely have an appetite for we should resolutely avoid. Ought not choice in matrimony to be guided by the same principle?

Above all things young ladies should ask God, the best maker of marriages, to direct their choice aright.