a woman, he is unjust and cruel if he even _slight_ her on account of
her want of beauty, and, if he treat her harshly, on this account, he is
a brute. But, it requires a greater degree of reflection and
consideration than falls to the lot of men in general to make them act
with justice in such a case; and, therefore, the best way is to guard,
if you can, against the temptation to commit such injustice, which is to
be done in no other way, than by not marrying any one that you _do not
think handsome_.
136. I must not conclude this address to THE LOVER without something on
the subject of _seduction_ and _inconstancy_. In, perhaps, nineteen
cases out of twenty, there is, in the unfortunate cases of illicit
gratification, no seduction at all, the passion, the absence of virtue,
and the crime, being all mutual. But, there are other cases of a very
different description; and where a man goes coolly and deliberately to
work, first to gain and rivet the affections of a young girl, then to
take advantage of those affections to accomplish that which he knows
must be her ruin, and plunge her into misery for life; when a man does
this merely for the sake of a momentary gratification, he must be either
a selfish and unfeeling brute, unworthy of the name of man, or he must
have a heart little inferior, in point of obduracy, to that of the
murderer. Let young women, however, be aware; let them be well aware,
that few, indeed, are the cases in which this apology can possibly avail
them. Their character is not solely theirs, but belongs, in part, to
their family and kindred. They may, in the case contemplated, be objects
of compassion with the world; but what contrition, what repentance, what
remorse, what that even the tenderest benevolence can suggest, is to
heal the wounded hearts of humbled, disgraced, but still affectionate,
parents, brethren and sisters?
137. As to _constancy_ in Lovers, though I do not approve of the saying,
'At lovers' lies Jove laughs;' yet, when people are young, one object
may supplant another in their affections, not only without criminality
in the party experiencing the change, but without blame; and it is
honest, and even humane, to act upon the change; because it would be
both foolish and cruel to marry one girl while you liked another better:
and the same holds good with regard to the other sex. Even when
_marriage_ has been _promised_, and that, too, in the most solemn
manner, it is better for both parties to break off, than to be coupled
together with the reluctant assent of either; and I have always thought,
that actions for damages, on this score, if brought by the girl, show a
want of delicacy as well as of spirit; and, if brought by the man,
excessive meanness. Some damage may, indeed, have been done to the
complaining party; but no damage equal to what that party would have
sustained from a marriage, to which the other party would have yielded
by a sort of compulsion, producing to almost a certainty what Hogarth,
in his _Marriage à la Mode_, most aptly typifies by two curs, of
different sexes, fastened together by what sportsmen call _couples_,
pulling different ways, and snarling and barking and foaming like
furies.
138. But when promises have been made to a young woman; when they have
been relied on for any considerable time; when it is manifest that her
peace and happiness, and, perhaps, her life, depend upon their
fulfilment; when things have been carried to this length, the change in
the Lover ought to be announced in the manner most likely to make the
disappointment as supportable as the case will admit of; for, though it
is better to break the promise than to marry one while you like another
better; though it is better for both parties, you have no right to break
the heart of her who has, and that, too, with your accordance, and,
indeed, at your instigation, or, at least, by your encouragement,
confided it to your fidelity. You cannot help your change of affections;
but you can help making the transfer in such a way as to cause the
destruction, or even probable destruction, nay, if it were but the deep
misery, of her, to gain whose heart you had pledged your own. You ought
to proceed by slow degrees; you ought to call time to your aid in
executing the painful task; you ought scrupulously to avoid every thing
calculated to aggravate the sufferings of the disconsolate party.
139. A striking, a monstrous, instance of conduct the contrary of this
has recently been placed upon the melancholy records of the Coroner of
Middlesex; which have informed an indignant public, that a young man,
having first secured the affections of a virtuous young woman, next
promised her marriage, then caused the banns to be published, and then,
on the very day appointed for the performance of the ceremony, married
another woman, in the same church; and this, too, without, as he avowed,
any provocation, and without the smallest intimation or hint of his
intention to the disappointed party, who, unable to support existence
under a blow so cruel, put an end to that existence by the most deadly
and the swiftest poison. If any thing could wipe from our country the
stain of having given birth to a monster so barbarous as this, it would
be the abhorrence of him which the jury expressed; and which, from every
tongue, he ought to hear to the last moment of his life.
140. Nor has a man any right to _sport_ with the affections of a young
woman, though he stop short of _positive promises_. Vanity is generally
the tempter in this case; a desire to be regarded as being admired by
the women: a very despicable species of vanity, but frequently greatly
mischievous, notwithstanding. You do not, indeed, actually, in so many
words, promise to marry; but the general tenor of your language and
deportment has that meaning; you know that your meaning is so
understood; and if you have not such meaning; if you be fixed by some
previous engagement with, or greater liking for, another; if you know
you are here sowing the seeds of disappointment; and if you, keeping
your previous engagement or greater liking a secret, persevere, in spite
of the admonitions of conscience, you are guilty of deliberate
deception, injustice and cruelty: you make to God an ungrateful return
for those endowments which have enabled you to achieve this inglorious
and unmanly triumph; and if, as is frequently the case, you _glory_ in
such triumph, you may have person, riches, talents to excite envy; but
every just and humane man will abhor your heart.
141. There are, however, certain cases in which you deceive, or nearly
deceive, _yourself_; cases in which you are, by degrees and by
circumstances, deluded into something very nearly resembling sincere
love for a second object, the first still, however, maintaining her
ground in your heart; cases in which you are not actuated by vanity, in
which you are not guilty of injustice and cruelty; but cases in which
you, nevertheless, _do wrong_: and as I once did a wrong of this sort
myself, I will here give a history of it, as a warning to every young
man who shall read this little book; that being the best and, indeed,
the only atonement, that I can make, or ever could have made, for this
only _serious sin_ that I ever committed against the female sex.
142. The Province of New Brunswick, in North America, in which I passed
my years from the age of eighteen to that of twenty-six, consists, in
general, of heaps of rocks, in the interstices of which grow the pine,
the spruce, and various sorts of fir trees, or, where the woods have
been burnt down, the bushes of the raspberry or those of the
huckleberry. The province is cut asunder lengthwise, by a great river,
called the St. John, about two hundred miles in length, and, at half way
from the mouth, full a mile wide. Into this main river run innumerable
smaller rivers, there called CREEKS. On the sides of these creeks the
land is, in places, clear of rocks; it is, in these places, generally
good and productive; the trees that grow here are the birch, the maple,
and others of the deciduous class; natural meadows here and there
present themselves; and some of these spots far surpass in rural beauty
any other that my eyes ever beheld; the creeks, abounding towards their
sources in water-falls of endless variety, as well in form as in
magnitude, and always teeming with fish, while water-fowl enliven their
surface, and while wild-pigeons, of the gayest plumage, flutter, in
thousands upon thousands, amongst the branches of the beautiful trees,
which, sometimes, for miles together, form an arch over the creeks.
143. I, in one of my rambles in the woods, in which I took great
delight, came to a spot at a very short distance from the source of one
of these creeks. Here was every thing to delight the eye, and especially
of one like me, who seem to have been born to love rural life, and trees
and plants of all sorts. Here were about two hundred acres of natural
meadow, interspersed with patches of maple-trees in various forms and of
various extent; the creek (there about thirty miles from its point of
joining the St. John) ran down the middle of the spot, which formed a
sort of dish, the high and rocky hills rising all round it, except at
the outlet of the creek, and these hills crowned with lofty pines: in
the hills were the sources of the creek, the waters of which came down
in cascades, for any one of which many a nobleman in England would, if
he could transfer it, give a good slice of his fertile estate; and in
the creek, at the foot of the cascades, there were, in the season,
salmon the finest in the world, and so abundant, and so easily taken, as
to be used for manuring the land.
144. If nature, in her very best humour, had made a spot for the express
purpose of captivating me, she could not have exceeded the efforts which
she had here made. But I found something here besides these rude works
of nature; I found something in the fashioning of which _man_ had had
something to do. I found a large and well-built log dwelling house,
standing (in the month of September) on the edge of a very good field of
Indian Corn, by the side of which there was a piece of buck-wheat just
then mowed. I found a homestead, and some very pretty cows. I found all
the things by which an easy and happy farmer is surrounded: and I found
still something besides all these; something that was destined to give
me a great deal of pleasure and also a great deal of pain, both in their
extreme degree; and both of which, in spite of the lapse of forty years,
now make an attempt to rush back into my heart.
145. Partly from misinformation, and partly from miscalculation, I had
lost my way; and, quite alone, but armed with my sword and a brace of
pistols, to defend myself against the bears, I arrived at the log-house
in the middle of a moonlight night, the hoar frost covering the trees
and the grass. A stout and clamorous dog, kept off by the gleaming of my
sword, waked the master of the house, who got up, received me with great
hospitality, got me something to eat, and put me into a feather-bed, a
thing that I had been a stranger to for some years. I, being very tired,
had tried to pass the night in the woods, between the trunks of two
large trees, which had fallen side by side, and within a yard of each
other. I had made a nest for myself of dry fern, and had made a covering
by laying boughs of spruce across the trunks of the trees. But unable to
sleep on account of the cold; becoming sick from the great quantity of
water that I had drank during the heat of the day, and being, moreover,
alarmed at the noise of the bears, and lest one of them should find me
in a defenceless state, I had roused myself up, and had crept along as
well as I could. So that no hero of eastern romance ever experienced a
more enchanting change.
146. I had got into the house of one of those YANKEE LOYALISTS, who, at
the close of the revolutionary war (which, until it had succeeded, was
called a rebellion) had accepted of grants of land in the King's
Province of New Brunswick; and who, to the great honour of England, had
been furnished with all the means of making new and comfortable
settlements. I was suffered to sleep till breakfast time, when I found a
table, the like of which I have since seen so many in the United States,
loaded with good things. The master and the mistress of the house, aged
about fifty, were like what an English farmer and his wife were half a
century ago. There were two sons, tall and stout, who appeared to have
come in from work, and the youngest of whom was about my age, then
twenty-three. But there was _another member_ of the family, aged
nineteen, who (dressed according to the neat and simple fashion of New
England, whence she had come with her parents five or six years before)
had her long light-brown hair twisted nicely up, and fastened on the top
of her head, in which head were a pair of lively blue eyes, associated
with features of which that softness and that sweetness, so
characteristic of American girls, were the predominant expressions, the
whole being set off by a complexion indicative of glowing health, and
forming, figure, movements, and all taken together, an assemblage of
beauties, far surpassing any that I had ever seen but _once_ in my life.
That _once_ was, too, _two years agone_; and, in such a case and at such
an age, two years, two whole years, is a long, long while! It was a
space as long as the eleventh part of my then life! Here was the
_present_ against the _absent_: here was the power of the _eyes_ pitted
against that of the _memory_: here were all the senses up in arms to
subdue the influence of the thoughts: here was vanity, here was passion,
here was the spot of all spots in the world, and here were also the
life, and the manners and the habits and the pursuits that I delighted
in: here was every thing that imagination can conceive, united in a
conspiracy against the poor little brunette in England! What, then, did
I fall in love at once with this bouquet of lilies and roses? Oh! by no
means. I was, however, so enchanted with _the place_; I so much enjoyed
its tranquillity, the shade of the maple trees, the business of the
farm, the sports of the water and of the woods, that I stayed at it to
the last possible minute, promising, at my departure, to come again as
often as I possibly could; a promise which I most punctually fulfilled.
147. Winter is the great season for jaunting and _dancing_ (called
_frolicking_) in America. In this Province the river and the creeks were
the only _roads_ from settlement to settlement. In summer we travelled
in _canoes_; in winter in _sleighs_ on the ice or snow. During more than
two years I spent all the time I could with my Yankee friends: they were
all fond of me: I talked to them about country affairs, my evident
delight in which they took as a compliment to themselves: the father and
mother treated me as one of their children; the sons as a brother; and
the daughter, who was as modest and as full of sensibility as she was
beautiful, in a way to which a chap much less sanguine than I was would
have given the tenderest interpretation; which treatment I, especially
in the last-mentioned case, most cordially repaid.
148. It is when you meet in company with others of your own age that you
are, in love matters, put, most frequently, to the test, and exposed to
detection. The next door neighbour might, in that country, be ten miles
off. We used to have a frolic, sometimes at one house and sometimes at
another. Here, where female eyes are very much on the alert, no secret
can long be kept; and very soon father, mother, brothers and the whole
neighbourhood looked upon the thing as certain, not excepting herself,
to whom I, however, had never once even talked of marriage, and had
never even told her that I _loved_ her. But I had a thousand times done
these by _implication_, taking into view the interpretation that she
would naturally put upon my looks, appellations and acts; and it was of
this, that I had to accuse myself. Yet I was not a _deceiver_; for my
affection for her was very great: I spent no really pleasant hours but
with her: I was uneasy if she showed the slightest regard for any other
young man: I was unhappy if the smallest matter affected her health or
spirits: I quitted her in dejection, and returned to her with eager
delight: many a time, when I could get leave but for a day, I paddled in
a canoe two whole succeeding nights, in order to pass that day with her.
If this was not love, it was first cousin to it; for as to any
_criminal_ intention I no more thought of it, in her case, than if she
had been my sister. Many times I put to myself the questions: 'What am I
at? Is not this wrong? _Why do I go?_' But still I went.
149. Then, further in my excuse, my _prior engagement_, though carefully
left unalluded to by both parties, was, in that thin population, and
owing to the singular circumstances of it, and to the great talk that
there always was about me, _perfectly well known_ to her and all her
family. It was matter of so much notoriety and conversation in the
Province, that GENERAL CARLETON (brother of the late Lord Dorchester),
who was the Governor when I was there, when he, about fifteen years
afterwards, did me the honour, on his return to England, to come and see
me at my house in Duke Street, Westminster, asked, before he went away,
to see my _wife_, of whom _he had heard so much_ before her marriage. So
that here was no _deception_ on my part: but still I ought not to have
suffered even the most distant hope to be entertained by a person so
innocent, so amiable, for whom I had so much affection, and to whose
heart I had no right to give a single twinge. I ought, from the very
first, to have prevented the possibility of her ever feeling pain on my
account. I was young, to be sure; but I was old enough to know what was
my duty in this case, and I ought, dismissing my own feelings, to have
had the resolution to perform it.
150. The _last parting_ came; and now came my just punishment! The time
was known to every body, and was irrevocably fixed; for I had to move
with a regiment, and the embarkation of a regiment is an _epoch_ in a
thinly settled province. To describe this parting would be too painful
even at this distant day, and with this frost of age upon my head. The
kind and virtuous father came forty miles to see me just as I was going
on board in the river. _His_ looks and words I have never forgotten. As
the vessel descended, she passed the mouth of _that creek_ which I had
so often entered with delight; and though England, and all that England
contained, were before me, I lost sight of this creek with an aching
heart.
151. On what trifles turn the great events in the life of man! If I had
received a _cool_ letter from my intended wife; if I had only heard a
rumour of any thing from which fickleness in her might have been
inferred; if I had found in her any, even the smallest, abatement of
affection; if she had but let go any one of the hundred strings by which
she held my heart: if any of these, never would the world have heard of
me. Young as I was; able as I was as a soldier; proud as I was of the
admiration and commendations of which I was the object; fond as I was,
too, of the command, which, at so early an age, my rare conduct and
great natural talents had given me; sanguine as was my mind, and
brilliant as were my prospects: yet I had seen so much of the
meannesses, the unjust partialities, the insolent pomposity, the
disgusting dissipations of that way of life, that I was weary of it: I
longed, exchanging my fine laced coat for the Yankee farmer's home-spun,
to be where I should never behold the supple crouch of servility, and
never hear the hectoring voice of authority, again; and, on the lonely
banks of this branch-covered creek, which contained (she out of the
question) every thing congenial to my taste and dear to my heart, I,
unapplauded, unfeared, unenvied and uncalumniated, should have lived and
died.
LETTER IV
TO A HUSBAND
152. It is in this capacity that your conduct will have the greatest
effect on your happiness; and a great deal will depend on the manner in
which you _begin_. I am to suppose that you have made a _good choice_;
but a good young woman may be made, by a weak, a harsh, a neglectful, an
extravagant, or a profligate husband, a really bad wife and mother. All
in a wife, beyond her own natural disposition and education is, nine
times out of ten, the work of her husband.
153. The first thing of all, be the rank in life what it may, is to
convince her of the necessity of _moderation in expense_; and to make
her clearly see the justice of beginning to act upon the presumption,
that there are _children coming_, that they are to be provided for, and
that she is to _assist_ in the making of that provision. Legally
speaking, we have a right to do what we please with our own property,
which, however, is not our own, unless it exceed our debts. And, morally
speaking, we, at the moment of our marriage, contract a debt with the
naturally to be expected fruit of it; and, therefore (reserving further
remarks upon this subject till I come to speak of the education of
children), the scale of expense should, at the beginning, be as low as
that of which a due attention to rank in life will admit.
154. The great danger of all is, beginning with _servants_, or a
_servant_. Where there are riches, or where the business is so great as
to demand _help_ in the carrying on of the affairs of a house, one or
more female servants must be kept; but, where the work of a house can be
done by one pair of hands, why should there be two; especially as you
cannot have the hands without having the _mouth_, and, which is
frequently not less costly, inconvenient and injurious, the _tongue_?
When children come, there must, at times, be some foreign aid; but,
until then, what need can the wife of a young tradesman, or even farmer
(unless the family be great) have of a servant? The wife is young, and
why is she not to work as well as the husband? What justice is there in
wanting you to keep two women instead of one? You have not married them
both in form; but, if they be inseparable, you have married them in
substance; and if you are free from the crime of bigamy, you have the
far most burthensome part of its consequences.
155. I am well aware of the unpopularity of this doctrine; well aware of
its hostility to prevalent habits; well aware that almost every
tradesman and every farmer, though with scarcely a shilling to call his
own; and that every clerk, and every such person, begins by keeping a
servant, and that the latter is generally provided before the wife be
installed: I am well aware of all this; but knowing, from long and
attentive observation, that it is the great bane of the marriage life;
the great cause of that penury, and of those numerous and tormenting
embarrassments, amidst which conjugal felicity can seldom long be kept
alive, I give the advice, and state the reasons on which it was founded.