crush of civilised human life? To thoughtful minds there is no surer
sign of the progress that humanity is slowly making than the fact that
among our race the weak are succoured. Were it not for the sights of
helpfulness and pity that we can always see, many of us would give way
to despair, and think that man is indeed no more than a two-legged
brute without feathers. The savage even now kills aged people without
remorse, just as the Sardinian islanders did in the ancient days; and
there are certain tribes which think nothing of destroying an
unfortunate being who may have grown weakly. Among us, the merest
lazar that crawls is sure of some succour if he can only contrive to
let his evil case be known; and even the criminal, let him be never so
vile, may always be taken up and aided by kindly friends for the bare
trouble of asking.
But there are still symptoms of the animal disposition to be seen, and
only too many people conspire to show that human nature is much the
same as it was in the days when Job called in his agony for comfort
and found none. Wonderful and disquieting it is to see how the noblest
of minds have been driven in all ages to mourn over the disposition of
men to strike at the unfortunate! The Book of Job is the finest piece
of literary work known to the world, and it is mainly taken up with a
picture of the treatment which the Arabian patriarch met with at the
hands of his friends. People do not look for sarcasm in the Bible, but
the unconscious lofty sarcasm of Job is so terrible, that it shows how
a mighty intellect may be driven by bitter wrong into transcendencies
of wrath and scorn. "Ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with
you." The old desert-prince will not succumb even in his worst
extremity, and he lashes his tormentors with wild but strong bursts of
withering satire. But Job was down, and his cool friends went on
imperturbably, probing his weakness, sneering at his excuses, and, I
suspect, rejoicing not a little in his wild outbreaks of pain and
despair. The book is one of the world's monuments, and it has been
placed there to remind all people that dwell on earth of their own
innate meanness; it has been placed before us as a lesson against
cruelty, treachery, ingratitude. Have we gone very far in the
direction since Job raged and mourned? Those who look around them may
answer the question in their own way.
The world had not progressed much in Shakspere's time, at any rate.
Like all of us, Shakspere was able to look on the work of beautiful
and kind souls--no one has ever spoken more nobly of the benefactions
conferred on their brethren by the righteous; but that calm immortal
soul had in it depths of awful scorn and anger, which bubbled up only
a very few times. Few people read "Timon of Athens"; and I do not
blame the neglect, for it is a spirit-crushing play, and a man must be
bold if he cares to look at it twice. But in it it is plain to me that
Shakspere lets us see a gleam from the boiling flood of scorn that
raged far under his serene exterior. The words bite; the abandonment
of the satirist is complete. He puts into the mouth of the man who is
down a whole acrid and scurrilous philosophy of success and failure;
and there is not a passage in Swift which can equal for venom and
emphasis the ferocious words of the Athenian misanthrope. We know
nothing of Shakspere's mood while he was writing this cruel piece, but
I should imagine he must have been ready to quit the world in a
veritable ecstasy of wild passion and contempt.
If we take away the literature of love and the literature of fear, we
have but little left save the endless works that harp on one
theme--the remorseless savagery of civilised men toward those who
fail, or are supposed to fail, in life's grim warfare.
"Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
That dost not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot!
Though thou the waters warp,
Thy tooth is not so sharp
As friend remembered not!"
Those lines are hackneyed until every poetaster can quote them or
parody them at will; but very few readers consider that the bitter
verse summarises a whole literature. From Homer to Tennyson the ugly
tune has been played on all strings; and mankind have such a vivid
perception of the truth uttered by the satirists, that they read the
whole story with gusto whenever it is put into a fresh form--and each
man thinks that he at least is not one of those for whom the poet's
lash is meant. Novel, essay, poem, play, and sermon--all recur with
steady persistence to one ancient topic; and yet men try their best to
bring themselves low, as they might if Job, Shakspere, Congreve, and
Tennyson had never written at all, and as though no warnings were
being actually enacted all round, as on a stage.
Sometimes I wonder whether the majority of men ever really try to
conceive what it is to be down until their fate is upon them. I can
hardly think it. It has been well said that all of us know we shall
die, but none of us believe it. The idea of the dark plunge is
unfamiliar to the healthy imagination; and the majority of our race go
on as if the great change were only a fable devised by foolish poets
to scare children. I believe that, if all men were vouchsafed a sudden
comprehension of the real meaning of death, sin would cease.
Furthermore, I am persuaded that if every man could see in a flash the
burning history of the one who is down, the whole of our reasonable
population would take thought for the morrow--drink-shops would be
closed, the dice-box would rattle no more, and the sight of a genuine
idler would be unknown. Not a few of us have seen tragedies enough in
the course of our pilgrimage, and have learned to regard the doomed
weaklings--the wreckage of civilisation, the folk who are down--with
mingled compassion and dismay. I have found in such cases that the
miserable mortals never knew to what they were coming; and the most
notable feature in their attitude was the wild and almost tearful
surprise with which they regarded the conduct of their friends. The
pictures of these forlorn wastrels people a certain corner of the
mind, and one can make the ragged brigade start out in lines of deadly
and lurid fire at a moment's warning, until there is a whole Inferno
before one. But I shall speak no more at present of the degraded ones;
I wish to gain a thought of pity for those who are blameless; and I
want to stir up the blameless ones, who are generally ignorant
creatures, so that they may exercise a little of the wisdom of the
serpent in time. Be it remembered that, although the ruined and
blameless man is not subjected to such moral scorn as falls to the lot
of the wastrel, the practical consequences of being down are much the
same for him as for the victim of sloth or sin. He feels the pinch of
physical misery, and, however lofty his spirit may be, it can never be
lofty enough to relieve the gnawing pains of bodily privation.
Moreover, he will meet with persecution just as if he were a villain
or a cheat, and that too from men who know that he is honest. The hard
lawyer will pursue him as a stoat pursues a hare; and, if he asks for
time or mercy, the iron answer will be, "We have nothing to do with
your private affairs; business is business, and our client's interests
must not suffer merely because you are a well-meaning man." Even our
dear Walter Scott, the soul of honour, one of the purest and brightest
of all the spirits that make our joy, the gallant struggler--even that
delight of the world was hounded to death by a firm of bill-discounters
at the very time when he was breaking his gallant heart in the effort
to retrieve disaster. No! The world is pitiful so far as its kindest
hearts are concerned, but the army of commonplace people are all
pitiless. See what follows when a man goes "down." Suppose that he
invests in bank shares. The directors are all men of substance, and
most of them are even lights of religion; the leading spirit attends
the same church as our investor, and he is a light of sanctity--so
pure of heart is he, that he will not so much as look at Monday's
newspapers, because their production entailed Sabbath labour. Indeed,
one wonders how such a man could bring himself to eat or sleep on
Sunday, because his food must be carried up for him, and, I presume,
his bed must be made. All the directors are free in their gifts to
churches and chapels--for that is part of a wise director's
policy--and all of them live sumptuously. But surely our investor
should guess that all this lavish expenditure must come out of
somebody's pocket; and surely he has skill enough to analyse a
balance-sheet! The good soul goes on trusting, until one fine morning
he wakes up and finds that his means of subsistence are gone. Then
comes the bitter ordeal; his friends are grieved, the public are
enraged, the sanctified men go to gaol, and the investor faces an
altered world. His oldest friend says, "Well, Tom, it's a bitter bad
business, and if a hundred is of any use to you, it is at your
service; but you know, with my family," &c. The unhappy defrauded
fellow finds it hard to get work of any sort; begins to show those
pathetic signs of privation which are so easily read by the careful
observer; hat, boots, coat, grow shabby; the knees seem to have a
pathetic bend. Friends are not unkind, but they have their own burdens
to bear, and if he inflicts his company and his sorrows too much on
any one of them, he is apt to receive a hint--probably from a
woman--that his presence can be spared; so the downward road trends
towards utter deprivation, and then to extinction. A young man may
recover from almost any blow that does not affect his character; and
this was strikingly proved in the case of that brilliant man of
science, R.A. Proctor, who was afterwards stricken out of life
untimely. He lost his fortune in the crash of Overend and Gurney's
company, and he immediately forgot his luxurious habits and turned to
work with blithe courage. How he worked only those who knew him can
tell, for no four men of merely ordinary power could have achieved
such bewildering success as he did. But a man who is on the downward
slope of life cannot fare like the lamented Proctor; he must endure
the pangs of neglect, until death comes and relieves him of the dire
torture of being down.
And the harmless widows who are suddenly robbed of their protector.
Ah, how some of them are made to suffer! Little Amelia Sedley, in
"Vanity Fair," has her sufferings and indignities painted by a
master-hand, and there is not a line thickened or darkened overmuch.
The miserable tale of the cheap lodgings, and the insults which the
poor girl had flung at her because, in the passion of her love, she
spent trifling sums on her boy--how actual it all seems! The widow who
may have held her head high in her days of prosperity, soon receives
lessons from women: they call it teaching her what is her proper
place. Those good and discreet ladies have a notion that their conduct
is full of propriety and discretion and sound sense; but how they make
their sisters suffer--ah, how they make the poor things suffer! I
believe that, if any improvident man could see, in a keenly vivid
dream, a vision of his wife's future after his death, he would stint
himself of anything rather than run the risk of having to reflect on
his death-bed that he had failed to do his best for those who loved
him. Women sometimes out of pure wantonness try to exasperate a man so
that he falls into courses which bring his end swiftly. Could those
foolish ones only see their own fate when the doom of being down in
the world came upon them, they would strain every nerve in their
bodies so that their husband's life and powers of work might be spared
to the last possible hour.
What can the man do who is down? Frankly, nothing, unless his strength
holds. I advise such a one never to seek for help from any one but
himself, and never to try for any of the employments which are
supposed to be "easy." Cool neglect, insulting compassion, lying
promises, evasive and complimentary nothings--these will be his
portion. If he cannot perform any skilled labour, let him run the risk
of seeming degraded; and, if he has to push a trade in matches or
flowers, let him rather do that than bear the more or less kindly
flouts which meet the supplicant. To all who are young and strong I
would say, "Live to-day as though to-morrow you might be ruined--or
dead."
VII.
ILL-ASSORTED MARRIAGES.
The people who joke and talk lightly about marriage do not seem to
have the faintest rational conception of the awful nature of the
subject. Awful it is; and, as serious men go through life, they become
more and more impressed with the momentous results which depend on the
choice made by a man or woman. A lad of nineteen lightly engages
himself; he knows nothing of the gloom, the terror, the sordid horror
of the fate that lies before him; and the unhappy girl is equally
ignorant. In fourteen years the actual substance of that young
fellow's very body is twice completely changed; he is a man utterly
different from the boy who contracted the marriage; there is not a
muscle or a thought in common between the boy and the man--yet the man
takes all the consequences of the boy's act. Supposing that the pair
are well matched, life goes on happily enough for them; but, alas, if
the man or the woman has to wake up and face the ghastly results of a
mistake, then there is a tragedy of the direst order! Let us suppose
that the lad is cultured and ambitious, and that he is attracted at
first by a rosy face or pretty figure only; supposing that he is thus
early bound to a vulgar commonplace woman, the consequences when the
woman happens to have a powerful will and an unscrupulous tongue are
almost too dreadful to be pictured in words.
Let no young folk fancy that mind counts for nothing in marriage. A
man must have congenial company, or he will fly to company that is
uncongenial; he must have joy of some kind, or he will fall into
despair. The company and the joy can best be supplied by the wife to
the husband, and by the husband to the wife. If the woman is dull and
trivial, then her husband soon begins to neglect her; if she is meek
and submissive, the neglect does not rouse her, and there are no
violent consequences; but it is awful to think of the poor creature
who sits at home and dimly wonders in the depth of her simple soul
what can have happened to change the man who loved her. She has no
resources--she can only love; she is perhaps kindly enough--yet she is
punished only because she and her lad made a blundering choice before
their judgments were formed. But, if the woman is spirited and
aggressive, then the lookers-on see part of a hideous game which might
well frighten the bravest into celibacy. She is self-assertive, she
desires--very rightly--to be first, and at the first symptom of a
slight from her husband she begins the process of nagging. The man is
refined, and the coarseness which he did not perceive before marriage
strikes him like a venomed point now; he replies fiercely, and perhaps
shows contempt; then the woman tries the effect of weeping. Unhappily
the tears are more exasperating than the scolding, and the quarrel
ends by the man rushing from the house. Then for the first time the
pair find that they have to deal with the whole forces of society; in
their rage they would gladly part and meet no more--or they think
so--but inexorable society steps in and declares that the alliance is
fixed until death or rascality looses it. For a little while the
estrangement lasts, and then there is a reconciliation, after which
all goes well for a time. But the shocking thing about the
ill-assorted marriage is that the estrangements grow longer and longer
and the quarrels ever more bitter. Even children do but little to
reconcile the jarring claims of man and wife, for they are a sign of
the lasting shackle which each of the miserable beings wants to break.
Worst of all in the whole terrible affair is the fact that it matters
not who gets the mastery--both are made more wretched. If the man has
an indomitable will and conquers the woman, he becomes a morose and
sarcastic tyrant, who makes her tremble at his scowl, while she
becomes a beaten drudge who makes up for long spells of submission by
shrill outbursts of casual defiance. If the woman gains the mastery, I
honestly believe that the cause of strict morality is better served;
but the sight of the man's gradual degradation is so sickening that
most people prefer keeping out of the house where a henpecked
individual lives. As time goes by, it matters not which wins in the
odious contest: both undergo a subtle loss of self-respect. In an
ordinary quarrel between men reason may possibly come in to some
degree; but in a quarrel between man and wife reason is utterly
excluded. The man becomes feminine, the woman grows masculine, and the
effect of this change of nature is disgusting and ludicrous to an
outsider, but serious in the extreme to the parties principally
concerned. By degrees indifference and rage give way to sullen, secret
hatred, which finds a vent usually in poisonous sarcasm.
Matters are not much better when the superiority is on the woman's
side. It is delightful to see a husband who is proud of his wife's
cleverness, and good-natured men are pleased by his innocent boasting.
The most pleasant of households may be found in cases where a clever,
good-humoured, dexterous woman rules over a sweet-tempered but
somewhat stupid man. She respects his manhood, he adores her as a
superior being, and they live a life of pure happiness. But, sad to
say, the husband is not usually good-humouredly willing to acknowledge
his partner's superiority, and in that case the girl's doom is a cruel
one. She may marry a gross, stupid lout, who begins by yawning away
his time in leisure hours, and ends by going out to meet companions of
his own sort. By and by comes the time when the ruffian grows
aggressive, and then the proud girl has to bear brutalities which rack
her very soul. Steadily the work of degradation goes on, and at last
the brutal man becomes a capricious bully, while the refined lady
sinks into a careless draggletail.
I have traversed many lands and seen men and cities, and know that the
cruel work which I have described goes on in too many quarters. The
ill-assorted marriage is made more wretched by the occasional glimpses
which the man and woman get of happy homes. The loveliest sight that
can be watched on earth is the daily life of a well-matched couple.
They need not be even in intellect, but each must have some quality
which gives superiority; such people, even if they have to struggle
hard, lead a life which is almost ideally happy. The great thing which
gives happiness is mutual confidence, and, when we see man and wife
exhibiting quiet and mutually respectful familiarity, we may be fairly
certain that they are to be looked on as most fortunate in the world.
By an exquisite natural law it happens that mentally a woman is the
exact complement of the man who is her proper mate, and her intellect
has qualities far finer and more subtle than the man's. Among hard
City men it is a common saying that no one would ever make a bad debt
if he took his customer home to dinner first. That means that the wife
would instantly measure the guest's character with that
lightning-footed tact which women possess. No man ever yet was
completely successful in life unless he took women's counsel in great
affairs; and, when a man has a wife with whom he can consult, his
chance is bettered a thousandfold.
To see a household where love and unity reign drives ill-matched folk
to madness. The man declares that his friend's wife makes the
felicity; the woman praises the other husband; and the unhappy souls
grow jealous together, and hate each other more cordially by reason of
the joy which they have seen. All sorts of evil ends come to these
wretched unions--in every workhouse, asylum, and prison the traces of
the social catastrophe may be seen; and, even when the misery is
hidden from general view, the tragedy is shocking to those who can
peep behind the scenes and look at the bad play. A very wise man has
said that "success is a constitutional trait." The phrase is a
profound one. A man who is born with "constitutional" power of
choosing the right mate is all but assured of success, and a woman has
the same fortune; but, in addition to the power of choosing, both man
and woman need training; and we cannot call a civilised being properly
trained unless he has some idea of the way to set about his choice.
The cases in which idleness, or pique, or dulness drives a man or
woman to take alcohol are numerous and loathsome. Women who start
married life as bright, merry, hopeful creatures become mere degraded
animals; and the odd thing about the matter is that the husband is
always the last to see the turn that his affairs are taking. A woman's
name may be in the mouths of scores of people before the party most
concerned wakes up to a sense of his position and is faced by a
picture of helpless and lost womanhood. If the man falls into the
alcoholic death-trap, we have once more a spectacle of dull misery
which may be indicated but which cannot be accurately described. The
victim grows hateful--his symptoms have been scientifically described
by one of the finest of modern physiologists--he is uncertain in mind,
and vengeful and revengeful. His wife is obliged to live with him,
under his rule and power, but she finds it hopeless to meet his
wishes, desires, fancies, and fantasies, however much she may study
and do her best to oblige, conciliate, and concede. To persons of this
class everything must be conceded, and yet they are neither pacified
nor satisfied; they cannot agree even with themselves, and their homes
are, literally speaking, hells on earth.
Then we have the cases wherein a poetic and artistic spirit is allied
to a gross and worldly soul of the lowest type. One of the most
brilliant artists and poets of his generation was informed by his wife
that she did not care for art and poetry and that sort of stuff. "It's
all high-falutin' nonsense," remarked this gifted and confident dame;
and the shock of surprise which thrilled her husband will be
transmitted to generations of readers. Hitherto we have dwelt upon
mere brutalities; but those who know the world best know that the most
acute forms of agony may be inflicted without any outward show of
brutality being visible. A generous high-souled girl with a passion
for truth and justice is often tied to a fellow whose "company"
manners are polished, but who is at heart a cruel boor. He can stab
her with a sneer which only she can understand; he can delicately hint
to her that she is in subjection, and he can assume an air of cool
triumph as he watches her writhe. I have often observed passages of
domestic drama which looked very like comedy at first sight, but which
were really quivering, torturing tragedy.
It is strange that the jars of married life have been so constantly
made the subject for joking. The attitude of the ordinary witling is
well known; but even great men have made fun out of a subject which is
the most momentous of all that can engage the attention of the
children of men. In running through Thackeray's works lately I was
struck by the flippancy with which some of the most heartbreaking
stories in literature are treated. Thackeray was one of the sweetest
and tenderest beings that ever lived, and no doubt his jocularity was
assumed; but minor men take him seriously, and imitate him. Look at
the stories of Frank Berry, of Rawdon Crawley, of Clive and Rosie
Newcome, and of General Baynes--they are sad indeed, but the tragic
element in them is only shadowed forth by the great master. There is
nothing droll in the history of mistaken marriages. At the very best
each error leads to the ruin or deterioration of one soul, and that is
no laughing matter.
VIII.
HAPPY MARRIAGES.