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_HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED._
PRESS NOTICES ON THE FIRST EDITION.
"_If wholesome advice you can brook,
When single too long you have tarried;
If comfort you'd gain from a book,
When very much wedded and harried;
No doubt you should speedily look,
In 'How to be Happy though Married!'_"--PUNCH.
"We strongly recommend this book as one of the best of wedding presents.
It is a complete handbook to an earthly Paradise, and its author may be
regarded as the Murray of Matrimony and the Baedeker of Bliss."--_Pall
Mall Gazette._
"The author has successfully accomplished a difficult task in writing a
clever and practical book on the important subject of matrimony.... This
book, which is at once entertaining and full of wise precepts, deserves
to be widely read."--_Morning Post._
"An entertaining volume.... The new guide to matrimonial
felicity."--_Standard_, Leader.
"A clever, readable, and entertaining book.... This delicious
book."--_Literary Churchman._
"This most elucidatory treatise.... As a 'companion to the honeymoon,'
this orange blossom, true-love-knot ornamented volume should no doubt be
highly esteemed."--_Whitehall Review._
"The book is tastefully got up, and its contents adapt it very well for
a present to a young bride."--_Queen._
"One of the cleverest, best written books on the subject we have read at
any time. To girls contemplating marriage, the volume should be
presented as a wedding gift.... Grave and gay, but never for a moment
dull or tiresome. Each page sparkles with anecdote or suggestive
illustration."--_Ladies' Treasury._
"A highly ornamental yet handy, well printed, and admirably written
volume."--_The Lady._
"A rich store of entertaining anecdote, and full of thoughts beautiful,
pious, and wise. Has a tasteful binding."--_Bookseller._
HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED
BEING A
Handbook to Marriage
BY
_A GRADUATE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MATRIMONY._
"Domestic happiness, thou only bliss
Of Paradise that hast survived the fall!
Though few now taste thee, unimpaired and pure,
Or, tasting, long enjoy thee, too infirm
Or too incautious to preserve thy sweets
Unmixed with drops of bitters, which neglect
Or temper sheds into thy crystal cup."--_Cowper._
"It is fit that I should infuse a bunch of myrrh into the festival
goblet, and, after the Egyptian manner, serve up a dead man's bones at a
feast: I will only show it, and take it away again; it will make the
wine bitter, but wholesome."--_Jeremy Taylor._
_SEVENTH AND POPULAR EDITION._
LONDON
T FISHER UNWIN
26 Paternoster Square
1887
TO THOSE BRAVE MEN AND WOMEN WHO HAVE VENTURED, OR WHO INTEND TO
VENTURE, INTO THAT STATE WHICH IS "A BLESSING TO A FEW, A CURSE
TO MANY, AND A GREAT UNCERTAINTY TO ALL," THIS BOOK IS
RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED IN ADMIRATION OF THEIR COURAGE.
PREFACE.
Most of the books intended to give "counsel and ghostly strength" to
newly-married people are so like a collection of sermons that they are
given away rather than read. When writing the following pages I have
remembered that the only kind of vice all people agree to shun
is--advice, and have endeavoured to hide the pill. This is my excuse if
at times I seem to fall into anecdotage.
One day two birds were busy building their nest in Luther's garden.
Observing that they were often scared while committing their petty
thefts by the passers to and fro, the Doctor exclaimed, "Oh, poor little
birds! fly not away; I wish you well with all my heart, if you would
only believe me!" If any birds of Paradise, or, to speak plainly,
newly-married people, are a little scared by the title of this book or
by any of its contents, I assure them that, while trying to place before
them the responsibilities they have undertaken, I wish them well with
all my heart, and take great interest in their nest-building.
To ask critics to be merciful at a time when new books are so numerous
that our eyes ache with reading and our fingers with turning the pages,
would be to ask them not to do their duty. They are the policemen of
literature, and they are bound to make bad and worthless books "move on"
out of the way of their betters. I can only hope that if any notice this
little venture they may not feel obliged to "crush" it "among the
stoure," as the Ayrshire ploughman had to crush the "wee, modest,
crimson-tipped flower."
I take this opportunity of thanking M. H., my best friend, without whose
help and sympathy this book would be a worse one than it is, and my life
much more unsatisfactory.
Part of the first chapter was published in _Chambers's Journal_, and I
am indebted to _Cassell's Saturday Journal_ for two anecdotes. I now
tender my best thanks to the proprietors of those periodicals for
permission to reprint the passages.
PREFACE
TO THE SECOND EDITION.
The "wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower," as I called this book when it
first made its appearance, has not been crushed with the ploughshare of
criticism "among the stoure." On the contrary, it has been so well
received that I am full of gratitude to the reviewers who recommended it
and to the public who bought it. One critic suggested that to make the
work complete a chapter on second marriages should be added. My reason
for not writing such a chapter is that, not having myself been as yet
often married, I did not presume to give advice to widows and widowers
who have their own experience to guide them.
Taking up the book in a lending library a friend read aloud the title to
a lady who accompanied her--"How to be Happy though Married." _Lady_:
"Oh, bother the happiness; does it tell how to be married?" I hope that
I may be pardoned if I cannot always do this.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. Page
HOW TO BE HAPPY _THOUGH_ MARRIED 1
CHAPTER II.
TO BE OR NOT TO BE--MARRIED? 9
CHAPTER III.
MARRIAGE-MADE MEN 20
CHAPTER IV.
THE CHOICE OF A WIFE 33
CHAPTER V.
THE CHOICE OF A HUSBAND 45
CHAPTER VI.
ON MAKING THE BEST OF A BAD MATRIMONIAL BARGAIN 52
CHAPTER VII.
MARRIAGE CONSIDERED AS A DISCIPLINE OF CHARACTER 65
CHAPTER VIII.
BEING MARRIED 71
CHAPTER IX.
HONEYMOONING 80
CHAPTER X.
MARRIAGE VOWS 87
CHAPTER XI.
"DRIVE GENTLY OVER THE STONES!" 101
CHAPTER XII.
FURNISHING 113
CHAPTER XIII.
MARRIED PEOPLE'S MONEY 119
CHAPTER XIV.
THE MANAGEMENT OF SERVANTS 129
CHAPTER XV.
PREPARATION FOR PARENTHOOD 140
CHAPTER XVI.
"WHAT IS THE USE OF A CHILD?" 146
CHAPTER XVII.
THE EDUCATION OF PARENTS 155
CHAPTER XVIII.
WANTED!--MOTHERS 162
CHAPTER XIX.
"NURSING FATHERS" 172
CHAPTER XX.
POLITENESS AT HOME 184
CHAPTER XXI.
SUNSHINE 192
CHAPTER XXII.
THEY HAD A FEW WORDS 201
CHAPTER XXIII.
PULLING TOGETHER 211
CHAPTER XXIV.
NETS AND CAGES 221
CHAPTER XXV.
HUSBANDS HAVE DUTIES TOO 235
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE HEALTH OF THE FAMILY 244
CHAPTER XXVII.
LOVE SURVIVING MARRIAGE 254
CHAPTER XXVIII.
"HE WILL NOT SEPARATE US, WE HAVE BEEN SO
HAPPY" 260
CHAPTER I.
HOW TO BE HAPPY _THOUGH_ MARRIED.
"How delicious is the winning
Of a kiss at love's beginning,
When two mutual hearts are sighing
For the knot there's no untying!"--_T. Campbell._
"Deceive not thyself by over-expecting happiness in the married
state. Look not therein for contentment greater than God will
give, or a creature in this world can receive, namely, to be free
from all inconveniences. Marriage is not like the hill Olympus,
wholly clear, without clouds."--_Fuller._
"How to be happy _though_ married." This was the quaint title of one of
Skelton's sermons, which would certainly cause a momentary cloud of
indignation, not to say of alarm, to pass over the minds of a
newly-married couple, should they discover it when skimming through a
collection of old volumes on the first wet day of their honeymoon.
"Two young persons thrown together by chance, or brought together by
artifice, exchange glances, reciprocate civilities, and go home to dream
of each other. Finding themselves rather uncomfortable apart, they
think they necessarily must be happy together." But there is no such
necessity. In marriage the measure of our happiness is usually in
proportion to our deserts.
"No man e'er gained a happy life by chance,
Or yawned it into being with a wish."
This, however, is just what many novices think they can do in reference
to matrimony. They fancy that it has a magic power of conferring
happiness almost in spite of themselves, and are quite surprised when
experience teaches them that domestic felicity, like everything else
worth having, must be worked for--must be earned by patient endurance,
self-restraint, and loving consideration for the tastes, and even for
the faults, of him or her with whom life is to be lived.
And yet before the first year of married life has ended, most people
discover that Skelton's subject, "How to be happy though married," was
not an unpractical one. Then they know that the path upon which they
have entered may be strewn with thorns instead of with roses, unless
mutual forbearance and mutual respect guard the way. The old bachelor
who said that marriage was "a very harmless amusement" would not have
pronounced such an unconditional judgment had he known more about it.
Matrimony is a harmless and a happy state only when careful precaution
is taken to defend the domain of the affections from harshness and
petulance, and to avoid certain moral and physical pitfalls.
Like government, marriage must be a series of compromises; and however
warm the love of both parties may be, it will very soon cool unless they
learn the golden rule of married life, "To bear and to forbear." In
matrimony, as in so many other things, a good beginning is half the
battle. But how easily may good beginnings be frustrated through
infirmity of temper and other causes, and then we must "tread those
steps with sorrow which we might have trod with joy."
"I often think," says Archdeacon Farrar, "that most of us in life are
like many of those sight-seers who saunter through this (Westminster)
Abbey. Their listless look upon its grandeur and its memorials furnishes
an illustration of the aspect which we present to higher powers as we
wander restlessly through the solemn minster-aisles of life.... We talk
of human misery; how many of us derive from life one-tenth part of what
God meant to be its natural blessedness? Sit out in the open air on a
summer day, and how many of us have trained ourselves to notice the
sweetness and the multiplicity of the influences which are combining for
our delight--the song of birds; the breeze beating balm upon the
forehead; the genial warmth; the delicate odour of ten thousand
flowers?"
What is said here of life in general is also true of married life. We go
through the temple of Hymen without noticing, much less appreciating,
its beauty. Certainly few people gain as much happiness from their
marriage as they might. They expect to find happiness without taking any
trouble to make it, or they are so selfishly preoccupied that they
cannot enjoy. In this way many a husband and wife only begin to value
each other when death is at hand to separate them.
In married life sacrifices must be ever going on if we would be happy.
It is the power to make another glad which lights up our own face with
joy. It is the power to bear another's burden which lifts the load from
our own heart. To foster with vigilant, self-denying care the
development of another's life is the surest way to bring into our own
joyous, stimulating energy. Bestow nothing, receive nothing; sow
nothing, reap nothing; bear no burden of others, be crushed under your
own. If many people are miserable though married, it is because they
ignore the great law of self-sacrifice that runs through all nature, and
expect blessedness from receiving rather than from giving. They reckon
that they have a right to so much service, care, and tenderness from
those who love them, instead of asking how much service, care, and
tenderness they can give.
No knowledge is so well worth acquiring as the science of living
harmoniously for the most part of a life with another, which we might
take as a definition of matrimony. This science teaches us to avoid
fault-finding, bothering, boring, and other tormenting habits. "These
are only trifling faults," you say. Yes, but trifles produce domestic
misery, and domestic misery is no trifle.
"Since trifles make the sum of human things,
And half our misery from those trifles springs,
Oh! let the ungentle spirit learn from thence,
A _small_ unkindness is a _great_ offence.
To give rich gifts perhaps we wish in vain,
But all may shun the guilt of giving pain."
Husband and wife should burn up in the bonfire of first-love all hobbies
and "little ways" that could possibly prevent home from being sweet. How
happy people are, though married, when they can say of each other what
Mrs. Hare says of her husband in "Memorials of a Quiet Life": "I never
saw anybody so easy to live with, by whom the daily petty things of
life were passed over so lightly; and then there is a charm in the
_refinement_ of feeling which is not to be told in its influence upon
trifles."
A married pair should be all the world to each other. Sydney Smith's
definition of marriage is well known: "It resembles a pair of shears, so
joined that they cannot be separated, often moving in opposite
directions, yet always punishing any one who comes between them."
Certainly those who go between deserve to be punished; and in whatever
else they may differ, married people should agree to defend themselves
from the well-meant, perhaps, but irritating interference of friends.
Above all, they should remember the proverb about the home-washing of
soiled linen, for, as old Fuller said, "Jars concealed are half
reconciled; while, if generally known, 'tis a double task to stop the
breach at home and men's mouths abroad."
Why should love-making end with courtship, and of what use are conquests
if they are not guarded? If the love of a life-partner is of far more
value than our perverse fancies, it is the part of wisdom to restrain
these in order to keep that. A suggestion was recently made from an
American pulpit that there was room for a new society which should teach
husband and wife their duty to each other. "The first article of the
constitution should be that any person applying for membership should
solemnly covenant and agree that throughout married life he or she would
carefully observe and practise all courtesy, thoughtfulness, and
unselfishness that belong to what is known as the 'engagement' period.
The second article should be that neither member of a conjugal
partnership should listen to a single word of criticism of the other
member from any relative whatever, even should the words of wisdom drop
from the lips of father, mother, brother, or sister. The rules of the
new society need not extend beyond these two, for there would be nothing
in the conduct of members in good standing to require other special
attention."
The wife, on her part, ought not to be less desirous than she was in the
days of courtship of winning her husband's admiration, merely because
she now wears upon her finger a golden pledge of his love. Why should
she give up those pretty wiles to seem fair and pleasant in his eyes,
that were suggested in love-dreams? Instead of lessening her charms, she
should endeavour to double them, in order that home may be to him who
has paid her the greatest compliment in his power, the dearest and
brightest spot upon earth--one to which he may turn for comfort when
sick of business and the weary ways of men generally.
George Eliot tells us that marriage must be a relation either of
sympathy or of conquest; and it is undoubtedly true that much of the
matrimonial discord that exists arises from the mutual struggle for
supremacy. They go to church and say "I will," and then, perhaps, on the
way home, one or other says "I won't," and that begins it. "What is the
reason," said one Irishman to another, "that you and your wife are
always disagreeing?" "Because," replied Pat, "we are both of one
mind--she wants to be master and so do I." How shall a man retain his
wife's affections? Is it by not returning them? Certainly not. The
secret of conjugal felicity is contained in this formula: demonstrative
affection and self-sacrifice. A man should not only love his wife
dearly, but he should tell her that he loves her, and tell her very
often, and each should be willing to yield, not once or twice, but
constantly, and as a practice to the other. Selfishness crushes out
love, and most of the couples who are living without affection for each
other, with cold and dead hearts, with ashes where there should be a
bright and holy flame, have destroyed themselves by caring too much for
themselves and too little for each other.
Each young couple that begins housekeeping on the right basis brings the
Garden of Eden before man once more. There are they, two, alone; love
raises a wall between them and the outer world. There is no serpent
there--and, indeed, he need never come, nor does he, so long as Adam and
Eve keep him at bay; but too often the hedge of love is broken, just a
little, by small discourtesies, little inattentions, small incivilities,
that gradually but surely become wider and wider holes, until there is
no hedge at all, and all sorts of monsters enter in and riot there.
"Out of the very ripeness of life's core,
A worm was bred."
The only real preservative against this worm is true religion. Unhappily
for themselves the healthy and young sometimes fancy that _they_ need
not think of this. They forget that religion is required to ennoble and
sanctify this present life, and are too liable to associate it
exclusively with the contemplation of death. "So 'a cried out--God, God,
God! three or four times: now I, to comfort him, bid him 'a should not
think of God; I hoped there was no need to trouble himself with any such
thoughts yet." This advice, which Mrs. Quickly gave to Falstaff on his
deathbed, reflects the thoughts of many people, but it was not sound
advice. Certainly it would be cruel rather than kind to advise a young
pair who have leaped into the dark of married life not to think of God.
He is a Saviour from trouble rather than a troubler, and the husband and
wife who never try to serve Him will not be likely to serve each other
or to gain much real happiness from their marriage.
The following is related in the memoirs of Mary Somerville. When a girl
she and her brother had coaxed their timid mother to accompany them for
a sail. The day was sunny, but a stiff breeze was blowing, and presently
the boat began to toss and roll. "George," Mrs. Fairfax called to the
man in charge, "this is an awful storm! I fear we are in great danger;
mind how you steer; remember I trust in you!" He replied, "Dinna trust
in me, leddy; trust in God Almighty." In terror the lady exclaimed,
"Dear me, is it come to that!" To _that_ it ought to come on the day of
marriage quite as much as on the day of death. It is not only in times
of danger and distress that we want God's presence, but in the time of
our well-being, when all goes merry as a marriage bell. Live away from
Him, and the happiness you enjoy to-day may become your misery
to-morrow.