(BY ALICE POLLARD)
[30] From 'Longman's Magazine,' by leave of the publishers.
The title of this article is not of my own choosing. It was
fore-ordained for me some time back by the rather excited correspondents
of a daily newspaper, which opened its columns to as many solutions of
the riddle as ingenuity could devise. It may fairly be objected that the
riddle is no riddle at all, but rather belongs to the class of
question-begging queries of which 'How long have you ceased beating your
mother?' is the most famous example. As a matter of fact, most men _do_
marry, and it seems, therefore, unreasonable to be asked to explain why
they don't. But on this one point my sex is perhaps a little
unreasonable. Women have never acquiesced wholeheartedly in Mr.
Stevenson's assertion that though the ideal woman is a wife the ideal
man is a bachelor, and so long as even a small minority of men of
presentable appearance and some visible means of subsistence persist in
denying themselves a man's highest privilege, the problem will doubtless
continue to be stated in the sweeping form which I here adopt.
The most hardened offenders are undoubtedly the members of a single
class: pleasant young fellows, with an income of three or four hundred a
year and no prospect of increasing it. A bachelor with £400 a year, if
he live within it, persists in regarding himself as a miracle of
economy, but with even the smallest gift of husbandry is probably as
rich as any man in the kingdom. To marry on the same £400 means a
terrible falling-off in the standard of comfort, and the one luxury
which these pleasant fellows religiously deny themselves is that of a
wife.
The story is not a new one, and the other day, in looking over some
pamphlets in a great library, I came across a thin quarto, entitled,
'The Batchelor's Estimate of the Expences of a Married Life In a Letter
to a Friend. Being an Answer to a Proposal of Marrying a Lady with
2000_l._ Fortune.' The date of the pamphlet is 1729, and in it the
situation is set forth with so much circumstance, and in so engaging a
manner, that I thought there might be some readers who would care to
spend a few minutes in looking at it with me.
A gentleman, himself a married man, having a relation a spinster of a
marriageable age, and possessing also the, for those days, by no means
despicable fortune of £2000, has proposed to a bachelor friend to
negotiate a marriage between them.
The bachelor has no innate objection to marriage as such--on the
contrary, he looks upon it as 'an agreeable state'; but he cannot 'at
present accept the proposal' because 'the following necessary expenses
arise so frequently and so openly to his view' that they deter him from
considering marriage as possible.
Up to the present time he has lived in chambers at the moderate rent of
£12, 10s. per annum. But so impressed is he with the probable
requirements of a lady with the 'handsome Fortune' of £2000, that he
sees himself at once obliged to secure a house with a rental of £50.
As a bachelor in chambers he has been lucky enough to escape all
'Church, Window and Poor's Taxes, Payments to Rector, Reader and
Lecturer, Water Rates, Trophy Money,[31] Militia, Lamp, Scavengers,
Watch, Constable, etc.' As a married man he calculates that for these
things alone he will be mulcted to the extent of 'at least' £9 per
annum.
[31] Trophy money was a duty paid by householders for providing the
militia with harness, drums, colours, etc.
Our friend was, we presume, in the habit of taking his morning cup of
coffee at a coffee-house. Now he sees in imagination not only his own
and his wife's daily supply of coffee to be provided, but he pictures
the innumerable 'dishes of tea' which will be consumed by her and her
maids, not to mention the additional quantity for gossips and card
parties. Thus, 'Tea, Coffee, Chocolate, Sugar, Spirits and Fresh Supply
of China will cost 12_l._ per annum.' We are tempted to inquire what
proportion of this sum must be set aside for 'spirits' and broken
crockery, and why, indeed, there should be any connection between them,
unless tea-drinkings in the early part of the eighteenth century were
too often modelled on the style of a certain famous one known to readers
of Dickens.
The consideration of tea, this being essentially a domestic article,
leads our bachelor to the question of servants. For his own use he has
been content with the services of a bedmaker, to whom he gave 50s. a
year. He forgets to add an unknown sum to pay for the waste,
impositions, and perquisites inseparable from a bedmaker's existence. In
the future the dignity of a citizen, a householder, and a married man
has to be supported, and the weight of this can only be sustained by a
staff of 'two Maid-servants and a Man'--the man to be in livery. Yet
even these luxuries will not cost him such a very large sum, since he
reckons to procure them all, livery included, for an additional £17,
10s. per annum--_i.e._ £20 in all.
We are next let into his confidence with regard to the proper amount of
entertainment he will think it fit and necessary to allow his wife. She
must certainly go to the play, but a lady of independent fortune, the
mistress of a grand house and a servant in livery, cannot be expected to
walk out in evening-dress, so a coach or chair must be provided for her
conveyance, and for the hire of these he makes a yearly computation of
£3, 10s. 'Her expenses at these Diversions' (which included, doubtless,
entrance fees and refreshments) would amount to another £3, 10s. As a
staid and steady bachelor not given (as he tells us later on) to
'sauntering at Coffee-Houses' or playing at hazard, he has been content
with going to the play about once a year, but now, as 'it would not be
proper she should go alone,' this exemplary husband will even sacrifice
his own inclinations, and, obeying the call of duty, attend his wife at
a cost of £1, 10s. a year! Not only is he considerate in the matter of
providing for his wife's pleasures, but he seems to us decidedly liberal
in the matter of pin-money, as he sets aside £30 for her personal
expenses.
Coals and candles weigh heavily on his mind. His landlady has hitherto
kept him sufficiently warm for an annual 40s. (coals must have been much
cheaper, landladies less of harpies, or the winters much milder in those
days!), but in his new establishment coals and candles will run up to
the large sum of £15.
His bachelor dinners have cost him an average of 10s. per week; when
married he must still dine, and even divert himself with 'evening
expenses' common both to married men and bachelors, so that instead of
a modest £25 for dinners he will now have to pay the following yearly
bills:
£ _s._ _d._
The Butcher 35 00 00
" Poulterer 06 00 00
" Fishmonger 07 00 00
" Herb-Woman 05 00 00
" Oylman 05 00 00
" Baker 08 00 00
" Brewer 10 00 00
" Grocer 06 00 00
" Confectioner 02 00 00
" Cheesemonger 04 00 00
Wine, Cyder, etc., at a moderate computation 30 00 00
The Fruiterer 01 10 00
The Milk-Woman 01 00 00
Salt, Small-coal, Rotten-stone, Brick-dust,
Sand, Oat-meal, Whiteing and many other
little Ingredients in House-Keeping I am
ignorant of 02 00 00
This detailed calculation over, we again catch a glimpse of the man's
personality and his conception of what is due from him towards a wife.
'If my Wife pleases me, as I do not doubt but your Relation will, (I
know my own Temper so well in that Respect that) I shall be often making
her Presents of either Rings, Jewels, Snuff-Boxes, Watch, Tweezers, some
Knick-Knacks, and Things of that Nature, in which, one Year with
another, I am sure I shall spend 5_l._' After this it occurs to him that
he has left out one important source of expense which he 'least wishes
for,' but which 'happens in most Families'--that is, the fees of doctor
and apothecary, which will, he fears, average £5 per annum.
'As for Children, we may reasonably expect one in every two Years, if
not oftener.' Reckoning the 'Expence of Lying-Inne, Child-Linen,
Midwife, Nurses, Caudles, Possets, Cradle, Christenings, etc.,' the
annual expense consequent on being a family man will be £15. But the
initial expense is not all: 'Nursing, Maintaining, Education, Cloathes,
Schooling,' and--here, surely, we have found the prototype of Mr. Walter
Besant's ideal father--providing an endowment or fortune for each child
will require a sum of £30 per annum; and he is 'satisfied' that he has
stated a sum 'vastly less' than is likely to prove needful in the end--a
foreboding in which he was certainly justified, for of payments for
school and 'cloathing,' now as then, there is no end!
Having provided himself in imagination with wife, house, servants, and
children, our far-seeing friend suddenly remembers that his dignity and
respectability will require to be supported by a seat in church, so we
find an entry, 'Pew in Church,' £2. This is followed, although we cannot
trace the connection, by an estimate of £8 per annum for 'Washing his
wife's and the Family Linen,' and we wonder how laundresses managed to
live in those days. But so far the house is not furnished, and an
initial £350 must be found for that. Fifty pounds is to go for plate
alone, 'without which, being so moderate a Quantity, I daresay my wife,
nor indeed should I myself be satisfied.' This £350 he calmly proposes
to deduct from his wife's fortune, reducing it, therefore, to £1650.
This £1650, placed out at 5 per cent. interest, will bring in an income
of £82, but the cautious bachelor says 5 per cent. is not likely to
continue, therefore he will reckon interest at 4 per cent. only, and at
this rate the wife's fortune will produce an income of only £56. He then
proceeds to show that, adding together the foregoing items, he will have
to spend on his wife £215, or even £231, 10s., 'above the Income of the
Fortune she brings, besides the Hazard and want of certainty for the
Money, which ought to be considered.'
And now the pamphlet draws to an end, with a conclusion we will give in
the writer's own words:
'These Things considered (and he that marries without previous
Consideration acts very indiscreetly), I do not see how I can marry
a Woman with the Fortune you propose, or that I should better
myself at all by it, and in Prudence, People should do so or let it
alone; (not that I propose or think to have more) I must therefore
live single, though with some regret that I cannot do otherwise,
and increase my own Fortune, which happens to be sufficient for my
own Maintenance till (if I may so call it) I can afford Matrimony.
'I wish the Lady all Happiness and a better Husband, and if it be
for her Satisfaction, one who has thought less of the Matter; not
but that I have a very good Opinion of Matrimony, and think of it
with Pleasure, as hoping one time or other to enter into its Lists,
but I now wait with Patience till my Circumstances or Thought vary.
One Thing I would not have you mistaken in, is, that I do not mean,
that your Relation will be thus expensive to me, more than any
other, only that whenever I marry, let her be who she will, I must
necessarily (if She has no more Fortune than you propose) expend
considerably more than 200_l._ a year on her, above the Income of
her Fortune, and at present I cannot persuade myself to be at so
great an Expense, for the value of trying a dangerous Experiment,
whether the Pleasures of Matrimony are yearly worth that Sum.'
And all this is submitted to the proposer by his 'Obliged and Humble
Servant.'
The whole question of marriage, with its arguments for and against,
seems to have been as engrossing a topic amongst English men and women
in the early part of the eighteenth century as it certainly is with us
now, and the bachelor's pamphlet brought forward at least two replies,
which we found bound up with the original. One of these, purporting to
be by the lady herself, and signed 'Philogamia,' may be dismissed in a
few words; its arguments are neither serious nor to the point, and such
wit as there is is of a low order, and too much in the _tu quoque_ style
to be amusing. The second rejoinder is by the 'Woman's Advocate,' and is
probably not, as it pretends, written by a man on behalf of women in
general, but rather by an irritated member of the weaker sex, who finds
herself and her fellows insulted _en masse_ by the bachelor's refusal to
marry one of them.
The 'Advocate' takes the various items of the 'Batchelor's Estimate' one
by one, and proceeds to demolish them to the best of her ability,
sometimes with a certain degree of success, due, we fancy, to the more
intimate knowledge of housekeeping details naturally possessed by a
woman. She at once attacks him on the subject of house-rent, and with
truly feminine malice reminds him how she has often heard him praise a
friend's house rented at £24, and declare that he 'could wish for
nothing better.' This rather reminds us of a young lady who advocated
the claims of a somewhat uninteresting young man by saying he would make
'such a delightful brother-in-law.'
Has not our sex, too, been accused, with some degree of justice, of
practising little meannesses, and does not the 'Woman's Advocate's'
confession that she 'has lived 10 years in one Parish and never paid a
penny to the Church' smack slightly of this feminine vice?
She goes on to say: 'To the Rector you will give 6_d._ as an Easter
offering--to the Lecturer what you please. Trophy-money is but 6_d._ per
annum. You need not join the Militia. Lamp, Scavenger, and Watch seldom
amount to thirty shillings, and as for the Constable's Tax, I never
heard of such a thing in my Life.' So the £9 is reduced to £2.
On the estimate for servants, especially for the footman in livery, the
'Woman's Advocate' pours great scorn. 'A man in livery forsooth! Have
the two maids so little to do that you must e'en employ a man to play
with 'em?'
But it is perhaps in her attack on the actual house-keeping estimates
that the 'Woman's Advocate' is at her best. She does not always assign
her reasons, but boldly makes such statements as the following: 'Your
Butcher's Bill is over-rated at least one Third. Your Poulterer's and
Fishmonger's more than two Thirds. As for the Herb-Woman you have
overtopt her with a Vengeance; Twelve pence a week is more than enough
for greens etc., _and besides_' (does not this bear some resemblance to
the traditional postscript?) '_half the year but few sorts are in
Season_.' There is more banter about greenstuff and salads, during which
the bachelor is taunted with being 'a meer Frenchman to eat seven Pounds
per annum in Salads,' and with 'outdoing the Italians in oiling it,' and
is, moreover, advised to buy his oil direct from the ship instead of
from the tavern, thereby effecting a saving of 10s. per quart!--a hint
we should imagine well worth carrying out.
Words fail the 'Advocate' in which to pour sufficient contempt on the
estimates for grocer and confectioner: 'If you are sweet-Tooth'd,' she
says, 'I will allow you now and then a Pennyworth of Sugar-Plumbs, but
think 40_s._ per annum in that kind of Trash too much for a Person of
your Years and Frugality; and I could really wish, for your own Sake,
you had omitted that Article in your Estimate.'
The mention of the doctor's and apothecary's fees, which he 'least
desired,' gives the 'Advocate' a final opportunity for crushing her
victim, and will serve as a very fair example of her style of rejoinder
throughout the whole answer when she is not dealing with concrete
materials: 'I believe you wish for no one Article of Expence; could you
have a Wife that would wear no Cloathes, eat no Victuals, bear no
Children, never be sick, and bring you 2 or 3,000_l._, the more the
better, I suppose your self-conceited Worship would marry, who imagine,
no doubt, you merit a Fortune of 50, nay, 100,000_l._ To conclude I
pronounce Bachelors the Vermin of a State. They enjoy the Benefits of
Society but contribute not to its charge, and sponge upon the Publick,
without making the least return. Had I any Power in the Legislature, you
should not only be punished for Mischievous Libel, but all Batchelors
above the age of Thirty should be double Tax'd.'