Читать книгу How to be Happy Though Married: Being a Handbook to Marriage - E. J. Hardy - Страница 5

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"How delicious is the winning

Of a kiss at love's beginning,

When two mutual hearts are sighing

For the knot there's no untying!"—T. Campbell.

"Deceive not thyself by over-expecting happiness in the married state. Look not therein for contentment greater than God will give, or a creature in this world can receive, namely, to be free from all inconveniences. Marriage is not like the hill Olympus, wholly clear, without clouds."—Fuller.

"How to be happy though married." This was the quaint title of one of Skelton's sermons, which would certainly cause a momentary cloud of indignation, not to say of alarm, to pass over the minds of a newly-married couple, should they discover it when skimming through a collection of old volumes on the first wet day of their honeymoon.

"Two young persons thrown together by chance, or brought together by artifice, exchange glances, reciprocate civilities, and go home to dream of each other. Finding themselves rather uncomfortable apart, they think they necessarily must be happy together." But there is no such necessity. In marriage the measure of our happiness is usually in proportion to our deserts.

"No man e'er gained a happy life by chance,

Or yawned it into being with a wish."

This, however, is just what many novices think they can do in reference to matrimony. They fancy that it has a magic power of conferring happiness almost in spite of themselves, and are quite surprised when experience teaches them that domestic felicity, like everything else worth having, must be worked for—must be earned by patient endurance, self-restraint, and loving consideration for the tastes, and even for the faults, of him or her with whom life is to be lived.

And yet before the first year of married life has ended, most people discover that Skelton's subject, "How to be happy though married," was not an unpractical one. Then they know that the path upon which they have entered may be strewn with thorns instead of with roses, unless mutual forbearance and mutual respect guard the way. The old bachelor who said that marriage was "a very harmless amusement" would not have pronounced such an unconditional judgment had he known more about it. Matrimony is a harmless and a happy state only when careful precaution is taken to defend the domain of the affections from harshness and petulance, and to avoid certain moral and physical pitfalls.

Like government, marriage must be a series of compromises; and however warm the love of both parties may be, it will very soon cool unless they learn the golden rule of married life, "To bear and to forbear." In matrimony, as in so many other things, a good beginning is half the battle. But how easily may good beginnings be frustrated through infirmity of temper and other causes, and then we must "tread those steps with sorrow which we might have trod with joy."

"I often think," says Archdeacon Farrar, "that most of us in life are like many of those sight-seers who saunter through this (Westminster) Abbey. Their listless look upon its grandeur and its memorials furnishes an illustration of the aspect which we present to higher powers as we wander restlessly through the solemn minster-aisles of life. … We talk of human misery; how many of us derive from life one-tenth part of what God meant to be its natural blessedness? Sit out in the open air on a summer day, and how many of us have trained ourselves to notice the sweetness and the multiplicity of the influences which are combining for our delight—the song of birds; the breeze beating balm upon the forehead; the genial warmth; the delicate odour of ten thousand flowers?"

What is said here of life in general is also true of married life. We go through the temple of Hymen without noticing, much less appreciating, its beauty. Certainly few people gain as much happiness from their marriage as they might. They expect to find happiness without taking any trouble to make it, or they are so selfishly preoccupied that they cannot enjoy. In this way many a husband and wife only begin to value each other when death is at hand to separate them.

In married life sacrifices must be ever going on if we would be happy. It is the power to make another glad which lights up our own face with joy. It is the power to bear another's burden which lifts the load from our own heart. To foster with vigilant, self-denying care the development of another's life is the surest way to bring into our own joyous, stimulating energy. Bestow nothing, receive nothing; sow nothing, reap nothing; bear no burden of others, be crushed under your own. If many people are miserable though married, it is because they ignore the great law of self-sacrifice that runs through all nature, and expect blessedness from receiving rather than from giving. They reckon that they have a right to so much service, care, and tenderness from those who love them, instead of asking how much service, care, and tenderness they can give.

No knowledge is so well worth acquiring as the science of living harmoniously for the most part of a life with another, which we might take as a definition of matrimony. This science teaches us to avoid fault-finding, bothering, boring, and other tormenting habits. "These are only trifling faults," you say. Yes, but trifles produce domestic misery, and domestic misery is no trifle.

"Since trifles make the sum of human things,

And half our misery from those trifles springs,

Oh! let the ungentle spirit learn from thence,

A small unkindness is a great offence. To give rich gifts perhaps we wish in vain, But all may shun the guilt of giving pain."

Husband and wife should burn up in the bonfire of first-love all hobbies and "little ways" that could possibly prevent home from being sweet. How happy people are, though married, when they can say of each other what Mrs. Hare says of her husband in "Memorials of a Quiet Life": "I never saw anybody so easy to live with, by whom the daily petty things of life were passed over so lightly; and then there is a charm in the refinement of feeling which is not to be told in its influence upon trifles."

A married pair should be all the world to each other. Sydney Smith's definition of marriage is well known: "It resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they cannot be separated, often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing any one who comes between them." Certainly those who go between deserve to be punished; and in whatever else they may differ, married people should agree to defend themselves from the well-meant, perhaps, but irritating interference of friends. Above all, they should remember the proverb about the home-washing of soiled linen, for, as old Fuller said, "Jars concealed are half reconciled; while, if generally known, 'tis a double task to stop the breach at home and men's mouths abroad."

Why should love-making end with courtship, and of what use are conquests if they are not guarded? If the love of a life-partner is of far more value than our perverse fancies, it is the part of wisdom to restrain these in order to keep that. A suggestion was recently made from an American pulpit that there was room for a new society which should teach husband and wife their duty to each other. "The first article of the constitution should be that any person applying for membership should solemnly covenant and agree that throughout married life he or she would carefully observe and practise all courtesy, thoughtfulness, and unselfishness that belong to what is known as the 'engagement' period. The second article should be that neither member of a conjugal partnership should listen to a single word of criticism of the other member from any relative whatever, even should the words of wisdom drop from the lips of father, mother, brother, or sister. The rules of the new society need not extend beyond these two, for there would be nothing in the conduct of members in good standing to require other special attention."

The wife, on her part, ought not to be less desirous than she was in the days of courtship of winning her husband's admiration, merely because she now wears upon her finger a golden pledge of his love. Why should she give up those pretty wiles to seem fair and pleasant in his eyes, that were suggested in love-dreams? Instead of lessening her charms, she should endeavour to double them, in order that home may be to him who has paid her the greatest compliment in his power, the dearest and brightest spot upon earth—one to which he may turn for comfort when sick of business and the weary ways of men generally.

George Eliot tells us that marriage must be a relation either of sympathy or of conquest; and it is undoubtedly true that much of the matrimonial discord that exists arises from the mutual struggle for supremacy. They go to church and say "I will," and then, perhaps, on the way home, one or other says "I won't," and that begins it. "What is the reason," said one Irishman to another, "that you and your wife are always disagreeing?" "Because," replied Pat, "we are both of one mind—she wants to be master and so do I." How shall a man retain his wife's affections? Is it by not returning them? Certainly not. The secret of conjugal felicity is contained in this formula: demonstrative affection and self-sacrifice. A man should not only love his wife dearly, but he should tell her that he loves her, and tell her very often, and each should be willing to yield, not once or twice, but constantly, and as a practice to the other. Selfishness crushes out love, and most of the couples who are living without affection for each other, with cold and dead hearts, with ashes where there should be a bright and holy flame, have destroyed themselves by caring too much for themselves and too little for each other.

Each young couple that begins housekeeping on the right basis brings the Garden of Eden before man once more. There are they, two, alone; love raises a wall between them and the outer world. There is no serpent there—and, indeed, he need never come, nor does he, so long as Adam and Eve keep him at bay; but too often the hedge of love is broken, just a little, by small discourtesies, little inattentions, small incivilities, that gradually but surely become wider and wider holes, until there is no hedge at all, and all sorts of monsters enter in and riot there.

"Out of the very ripeness of life's core,

A worm was bred."

The only real preservative against this worm is true religion. Unhappily for themselves the healthy and young sometimes fancy that they need not think of this. They forget that religion is required to ennoble and sanctify this present life, and are too liable to associate it exclusively with the contemplation of death. "So 'a cried out—God, God, God! three or four times: now I, to comfort him, bid him 'a should not think of God; I hoped there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet." This advice, which Mrs. Quickly gave to Falstaff on his deathbed, reflects the thoughts of many people, but it was not sound advice. Certainly it would be cruel rather than kind to advise a young pair who have leaped into the dark of married life not to think of God. He is a Saviour from trouble rather than a troubler, and the husband and wife who never try to serve Him will not be likely to serve each other or to gain much real happiness from their marriage.

The following is related in the memoirs of Mary Somerville. When a girl she and her brother had coaxed their timid mother to accompany them for a sail. The day was sunny, but a stiff breeze was blowing, and presently the boat began to toss and roll. "George," Mrs. Fairfax called to the man in charge, "this is an awful storm! I fear we are in great danger; mind how you steer; remember I trust in you!" He replied, "Dinna trust in me, leddy; trust in God Almighty." In terror the lady exclaimed, "Dear me, is it come to that!" To that it ought to come on the day of marriage quite as much as on the day of death. It is not only in times of danger and distress that we want God's presence, but in the time of our well-being, when all goes merry as a marriage bell. Live away from Him, and the happiness you enjoy to-day may become your misery to-morrow.