“Pirates of Love who know no duty.”
Of all the brutes enumerated in the human branch of zoology the
deliberate bachelor is the most unreasonable and selfish. Unreasonable,
because he voluntarily deprives himself of connubial bliss, domestic
comforts, and the prospect of being cheered and cared for in his old age
by a family of loving children. Selfish, because at present the
bread-winning arrangements are almost entirely framed for man’s
convenience alone, wherefore it is his duty to support a wife.
Masculine selfishness, however, is not exclusively responsible for the
rapid increase of bachelordom. The women themselves are largely at
fault—in two ways. The modern tendency of concentrating population in
large cities makes domestic life a much more expensive affair than it is
in smaller towns or in rural districts; and at the same time women are
gradually invading every sphere of masculine employment, thus reducing
wages by competition and making it more and more difficult for a man to
earn an income which allows him to marry. This aspect of the question,
once before alluded to, is one which the advocates of Woman’s Rights are
too apt to ignore. For the benefit of poor young girls, and widows, and
old maids, it is, indeed, but just that various employments adapted to
female hands should be thrown open to them and properly remunerated; but
if the effect of this is simply and constantly to _increase_ the number
of single poor women, by making marriage impossible, what is gained by
the change? A certain amount of misery is inevitable in the world; and
it seems better that it should be distributed where it will not imperil
the popularity and possibility of marriage.
After all, self-supporting women must always be the exception, not the
rule; for it is the destiny of the vast majority of women to be wives;
and regarding these even Mr. Mill admits “it is not ... a desirable
custom that the wife should contribute by her labour to the income of
the family.” Now surely it would be most absurd, as some “strong-minded”
women are trying to do, to arrange the educational scheme of all women
so as to benefit the exceptional women who are excluded from matrimony.
A thousand times more important is it to change woman’s education so as
to enable her to look after her household affairs. It is by neglecting
to do this that women supply the second cause for the increasing
prevalence of Bachelors. Every man is expected to learn his trade
properly before marriage; but woman’s proper occupation—the art of
taking care of home and making it a paradise, is commonly supposed to be
a thing that can be learned easily enough after marriage. Even when a
woman is so wealthy that she is not obliged to do any housework at all,
she should, like a ship’s captain, learn all about the duties of
subordinates, else she will be unable to command them properly. A
captain who displayed ignorance on any point before his sailors would
lose their respect and attitude of prompt obedience; and it has been
suggested that one reason why American women, especially, have so much
trouble with their servants, is because they know so little about
domestic economy that the servants, ignorant as they are, become
arrogant because of their superior knowledge.
On the subject of woman’s sphere, Herbert Spencer has written words
which should be hung in golden letters in every schoolroom: “When we
remember that up from the lowest savagery civilisation has, among other
results, brought about an increasing exemption of women from
bread-winning labour, and in the highest societies they have become most
restricted to domestic duties and the rearing of children; we may be
struck by the anomaly that at the present time restriction to indoor
occupations has come to be regarded as a grievance, and a claim is made
to free competition with men in all outdoor occupations.... Any
extensive change in the education of women, made with the view of
fitting them for business and professions, would be mischievous. _If
women comprehended all that is contained in the domestic sphere, they
would ask no other._ If they could see all that is implied in the right
education of children, to a full conception of which no man has yet
risen, much less any woman, they would seek no higher function”
(_Principles of Sociology_, vol. i. § 340).
When every woman has learned how to cultivate flowers and vegetables in
her domestic garden at the same time, the millennium will have arrived,
and the word Bachelor be found only in Dictionaries of Antiquities.
Women are sometimes held responsible in still another way for the
continuance of Bachelors in single boredom, viz. by refusing their Love
and breaking their hearts. But surely, as the shepherdess in _Don
Quixote_ has so eloquently shown, it does not at all follow that if a
man falls in Love with a woman, she must necessarily fall in Love with
him; and if she does _not_ love him, it is her _duty_ not to marry him.
Besides, a broken heart is a very rare article in this world, and every
nation has discovered a peculiar local remedy for it: the Spaniards by
stabbing the girl who broke it; the Italians by annihilating the rival;
the Germans by soaking the fragments in Rhine wine; the Englishmen by a
change of air; and ultimately they all follow the example of the
Frenchman who, on the day following the catastrophe, casts his eyes
about for a new charmer; or, if they do not, but like a snail withdraw
into their shell for the rest of their life, abusing all women as
heartless, they are bigger fools than they look. What would you say of a
fisherman who went out for a day’s sport and returned after an hour
because the first trout that nibbled at the bait escaped?
It is the happy privilege of every Bachelor to have loved fully and
deeply once in his life; but if his passion is not appreciated, it is
his duty to try again; for, even as a stolen kiss is not a real kiss
because it lacks the thrill of mutuality, so Love is not Love
“Till heart with heart in concord beats,
And the lover is beloved.”—WORDSWORTH.
True, La Rochefoucauld says that “The pleasure of love is in loving;”
and Shelley echoes the same sentiment in his _Prometheus_—
“All love is sweet,
Given or returned....
They who inspire it most are fortunate
As I am now; but those who feel it most, are happier still.”
Yet neither the English poet nor the French essayist appears to have
fathomed the full depth of the problem. It is as incorrect to say, “the
pleasure of love is in loving,” as to say, the pleasure of Love is in
being loved. To be loved by one I do not love is a matter of complete
indifference, except so far as my Pride or Pity may be involved. To love
where I am not loved, or am left in uncertainty, is more of anguish than
of delight. To attain the highest ecstacy of Love I must both be in Love
and able to say at the same time, “she loves me.” Reciprocity is not
only “that which alone gives stability to love,” as Coleridge remarks,
but that without which consummate Love is impossible.
Apparent exceptions occur only when the illusion of being loved is so
vividly kept up by the imagination as to counterfeit reality; as in the
case of Eleonore, who “became so intoxicated with her Love that she saw
it double and mistook her own feeling for that of both” (Dr. Brandes).
Therefore a Bachelor who has been unsuccessful in his first or second
Love has never enjoyed the highest bliss a human soul can attain, and is
bound to try again. Nor need he ever despair. There are a thousand
Juliets in the world for every man, and all he needs is the good luck to
_meet_ the one adapted to him: for she is his as soon as found; though
she may at first have the “cunning to be strange.”