_The ideal husband_
[No date; _c_. 1653.]
There are a great many ingredients must go to the making me happy in
a husband. My cousin F. says our humours must agree, and to do that he
must have that kind of breeding that I have had, and used to that kind
of company; that is, he must not be so much a country gentleman as to
understand nothing but hawks and dogs, and be fonder of either than of
his wife; nor of the next sort of them, whose time reaches no farther
than to be justice of peace, and once in his life high sheriff, who
reads no book but statutes, and studies nothing but how to make a
speech interlarded with Latin, that may amaze his disagreeing poor
neighbours, and fright them rather than persuade them into quietness.
He must not be a thing that began the world in a free school, was sent
from thence to the university, and is at his farthest when he reaches
the inns of court; has no acquaintance but those of his form in those
places; speaks the French he has picked out of old laws, and admires
nothing but the stories he has heard of the revels that were kept
there before his time. He must not be a town gallant neither, that
lives in a tavern and an ordinary; that cannot imagine how an hour
should be spent without company unless it be in sleeping; that makes
court to all the women he sees, thinks they believe him, and laughs
and is laughed at equally. Nor a travelled Monsieur, whose head is
feathered inside and outside, that can talk of nothing but of dances
and duels, and has courage enough to wear slashes, when every body
else dies with cold to see him. He must not be a fool of no sort, nor
peevish, nor ill-natured, nor proud, nor courteous; and to all this
must be added, that he must love me, and I him, as much as we are
capable of loving. Without all this his fortune, though never so
great, would not satisfy me, and with it a very moderate one would
keep me from ever repenting my disposal....