TO BE OR NOT TO BE--MARRIED?
"A bitter and perplexed 'What shall I do?'"--_Coleridge._
"Then, why pause with indecision
When bright angels in thy vision
Beckon thee to fields Elysian?"--_Longfellow._
To be or not to be--married? That is the question that may occur to
readers of the last chapter. If so much precaution and preparation are
necessary to ensure a harmless, not to say a happy marriage, is the game
worth the candle? Is it not better for the unmarried to cultivate the
contented state of mind of that old Scotch lady who said, "I wadna gie
my single life for a' the double anes I ever saw"?
The controversy as to whether celibacy or wedlock be the happier state
is a very old one, perhaps as old as what may be called the previous
question--whether life itself be worth living. Some people are very
ingenious in making themselves miserable, no matter in what condition
of life they find themselves; and there are a sufficient number of
querulous celibates as well as over-anxious married people in the world
to make us see the wisdom of the sage's words: "Whichever you do,
whether you marry or abstain, you will repent." If matrimony has more
pleasures and celibacy fewer pains, if loving be "a painful thrill, and
not to love more painful still," it is impossible exactly to balance the
happiness of these two states, containing respectively more pleasure and
more pain, and less pleasure and less pain. "If hopes are dupes, fears
may be liars."
It has been said of the state of matrimony that those who are in desire
to get out, and those who are out, wish to enter. The more one thinks on
the matter in this spirit, the more one becomes convinced that the
Scotch minister was by no means an alarmist who thus began an extempore
marriage service: "My friends, marriage is a blessing to a few, a curse
to many, and a great uncertainty to all. Do ye venture?" After a pause,
he repeated with great emphasis, "Do ye venture?" No objection being
made to the venture, he then said, "Let's proceed."
With the opinion of this Scotch minister we may compare that of Lord
Beaconsfield: "I have often thought that all women should marry, and no
men." The Admiral of Castile said, that "he who marries a wife and he
who goes to war must necessarily submit to everything that may happen."
There will, however, always be young men and maidens who believe that
nothing can happen in matrimony that is worse than never to be married
at all.
When Joseph Alleine, who was a great student, married, he received a
letter of congratulation from an old college friend, who said that he
had some thoughts of following his example, but wished to be wary, and
would therefore take the freedom of asking him to describe the
inconveniences of a married life. Alleine replied, "Thou would'st know
the inconveniences of a wife, and I will tell thee. First of all,
whereas thou risest constantly at four in the morning, or before, she
will keep thee till six; secondly, whereas thou usest to study fourteen
hours in the day, she will bring thee to eight or nine; thirdly, whereas
thou art wont to forbear one meal at least in the day for thy studies,
she will bring thee to thy meat. If these are not mischief enough to
affright thee, I know not what thou art." Most people will think that
such "inconveniences of a wife" are the strongest arguments in her
favour. Nearly all men, but especially bookish men, require the healthy
common-sense influence of women to guide and sweetly order their lives.
If we make fools of ourselves with them, we are even greater fools
without them.
With whatever luxuries a bachelor may be surrounded, he will always find
his happiness incomplete unless he has a wife and children to share it.
Who does not sympathize with Leigh Hunt? When in prison he wrote to the
governor requesting that "his wife and children might be allowed to be
with him in the daytime: that his happiness was bound up in them, and
that a separation in respect of abode would be almost as bad to him as
tearing his body asunder."
To be, or not to be--married? This is one of those questions in
reference to which the speculative reason comes to no certain
conclusion. _Solvitur ambulando._ It has nearly distracted some men,
whose minds were sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought. They have
almost died of indecision, like the donkey between two exactly similar
bundles of hay. An individual of this description, who was well known to
the writer, after dropping into a letter-pillar a proposal to a young
lady, was seen a few moments afterwards endeavouring to extract with a
stick the precious document. Failing in his attempt, the wretched mortal
walked round and round the pillar, tortured with the recurrence of
reasons against matrimony which he had lately argued away. Fortunately
for both parties the lady refused the tempting offer.
And yet this hesitating lover was, perhaps, but a type of many young men
of the age. Nowadays, it is often said they are giving up matrimony as
if it were some silly old habit suited only to their grandfathers and
grandmothers. The complaint is an old one. It was brought against pagan
youths more than eighteen hundred years ago, and yet the world has got
along. But can all the blame be justly thrown upon the one sex to the
exclusion of the other? Have thoughtless extravagance and ignorance of
household economy on the part of the ladies no share in deterring the
men from making so perilous a venture?
It is said that years ago in Burmah the ladies of the Court met in
formal parliament to decide what should be done to cure the increasing
aversion of young men to marriage. Their decision was a wise one. They
altered, by an order from the palace, the style of dress to be worn by
all honest women, reduced the ornaments to be assumed by wives to the
fewest and simplest possible, and ordained that at a certain age women
should withdraw from the frivolities of fashion and of the fashionable
world. Success was the result, and young Burmah went up in a body to the
altar.
Robert Burton, in his very quaint and interesting "Anatomy of
Melancholy," gives an abstract of all that may be said "to mitigate the
miseries of marriage," by Jacobus de Voragine. "Hast thou means? thou
hast none to keep and increase it. Hast none? thou hast one to help to
get it. Art in prosperity? thine happiness is doubled. Art in adversity?
she'll comfort, assist, bear a part of thy burden to make it more
tolerable. Art at home? she'll drive away melancholy. Art abroad? she
looks after thee going from home, wishes for thee in thine absence, and
joyfully welcomes thy return. There's nothing delightsome without
society, no society so sweet as matrimony. The band of conjugal love is
adamantine. The sweet company of kinsmen increaseth, the number of
parents is doubled, of brothers, sisters, nephews. Thou art made a
father by a fair and happy issue. Moses curseth the barrenness of
matrimony--how much more a single life!" "All this," says Burton, "is
true; but how easy a mater is it to answer quite opposite! To exercise
myself I will essay. Hast thou means? thou hast one to spend it. Hast
none? thy beggary is increased. Art in prosperity? thy happiness is
ended. Art in adversity? like Job's wife, she'll aggravate thy misery,
vex thy soul, make thy burden intolerable. Art at home? she'll scold
thee out of doors. Art abroad? If thou be wise, keep thee so; she'll
perhaps graft horns in thine absence, scowl on thee coming home.
Nothing gives more content than solitariness, no solitariness like this
of a single life. The band of marriage is adamantine--no hope of loosing
it; thou art undone. Thy number increaseth; thou shalt be devoured by
thy wife's friends. Paul commends marriage, yet he prefers a single
life. Is marriage honourable? What an immortal crown belongs to
virginity! 'Tis a hazard both ways, I confess, to live single, or to
marry; it may be bad, it may be good; as it is a cross and calamity on
the one side, so 'tis a sweet delight, an incomparable happiness, a
blessed estate, a most unspeakable benefit, a sole content, on the
other--'tis all in the proof."
In balancing this question Lord Bacon takes higher ground, and thinks of
the effect of marriage and celibacy on a man in his public capacity. "He
that hath wife and children hath given hostages to Fortune, for they are
impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
Certainly the best works, and of the greatest merit for the public, have
proceeded from the unmarried or childless men, which, both in affection
and means, have married and endowed the public. Yet it were great reason
that those that have children should have greatest care of future times,
unto which they know they must transmit their dearest pledges. Some
there are who, though they lead a single life, yet their thoughts do end
with themselves, and account future times impertinences. Nay, there are
some other that account wife and children but as bills of charges. Nay
more, there are some foolish, rich, covetous men that take a pride in
having no children because they may be thought so much the richer. For
perhaps they have heard some talk: 'Such an one is a great rich man;'
and another except to it: 'Yea, but he hath a great charge of children,'
as if it were an abatement to his riches. But the most ordinary cause
of a single life is liberty, especially in certain self-pleasing and
humorous minds, which are so sensible of every restraint, as they will
go near to think their girdles and garters to be bonds and shackles.
Unmarried men are best friends, best masters, best servants, but not
always best subjects, for they are light to run away, and almost all
fugitives are of that condition. A single life doth well with church
men, for charity will hardly water the ground where it must first fill a
pool."
After all, these enumerations of the comparative advantages of marriage
and celibacy are of little use, for a single glance of a pair of bright
eyes will cause antimatrimonial arguments to go down like ninepins. The
greatest misogamists have been most severely wounded when least
expecting it by the darts of Cupid. Such a mishap, according to the
anatomist of melancholy already quoted, had "Stratocles the physician,
that blear-eyed old man. He was a severe woman's-hater all his life, a
bitter persecutor of the whole sex; he foreswore them all still, and
mocked them wheresoever he came in such vile terms, that if thou hadst
heard him thou wouldst have loathed thine own mother and sisters for his
word's sake. Yet this old doting fool was taken at last with that
celestial and divine look of Myrilla, the daughter of Anticles the
gardener, that smirking wench, that he shaved off his bushy beard,
painted his face, curled his hair, wore a laurel crown to cover his bald
pate, and for her love besides was ready to run mad."
If it be true that "nothing is certain but death and taxes," we must not
seek for mathematical demonstration that the road we propose to travel
on is the right one when we come to crossroads in life. A certain amount
of probability ought to make us take either one or the other, for not to
resolve is to resolve. In reference to such questions as marriage
_versus_ celibacy, the choice of a wife, the choice of a profession, and
many others, there must be a certain venture of faith, and in this
unintelligible world there is a rashness which is not always folly.
There are, of course, many persons who, if they married, would be guilty
of great imprudence, not to say of downright crime. When, however, two
_lovers_--we emphasise the word--have sufficient means, are of a
suitable age, and are conscious of no moral, intellectual, or physical
impediment, let them marry. It is the advice of some very wise men.
Benjamin Franklin wrote to a young friend upon his marriage: "I am glad
you are married, and congratulate you most cordially upon it. You are
now in the way of becoming a useful citizen, and you have escaped the
unnatural state of celibacy for life--the fate of many here who never
intended it, but who, having too long postponed the change of their
condition, find at length that it is too late to think of it, and so
live all their lives in a situation that greatly lessens a man's value.
An old volume of a set of books bears not the value of its proportion to
the set. What think you of the odd half of a pair of scissors? It can't
well cut anything--it may possibly serve to scrape a trencher!"
Dr. Johnson says: "Marriage is the best state for man in general; and
every man is a worse man in proportion as he is unfit for the married
state." Of marriage Luther observed: "The utmost blessing that God can
confer on a man is the possession of a good and pious wife, with whom he
may live in peace and tranquillity, to whom he may confide his whole
possessions, even his life and welfare." And again he said: "To rise
betimes and to marry young are what no man ever repents of doing."
Shakespeare would not "admit impediments to the marriage of true minds."
The cares and troubles of married life are many, but are those of single
life few? The bachelor has no one on whom in all cases he can rely. As a
rule his expenses are as great as those of a married man, his life less
useful, and certainly it is less cheerful. "What a life to lead!"
exclaims Cobbett. "No one to talk to without going from home, or without
getting some one to come to you; no friend to sit and talk to, pleasant
evenings to pass! Nobody to share with you your sorrows or your
pleasures; no soul having a common interest with you; all around you
taking care of themselves and no care of you! Then as to gratifications,
from which you will hardly abstain altogether--are they generally of
little expense? and are they attended with no trouble, no vexation, no
disappointment, no _jealousy_ even? and are they never followed by shame
and remorse? To me no being in this world appears so wretched as an _old
bachelor_. Those circumstances, those changes in his person and in his
mind, which in the husband increase rather than diminish the attentions
to him, produce all the want of feeling attendant on disgust; and he
beholds in the conduct of the mercenary crowd that surround him little
besides an eager desire to profit from that event the approach of which
nature makes a subject of sorrow with him."
And yet it would be very wrong to hasten young men in this matter, for
however miserable an old bachelor may be, he is far more happy than
either a bad husband or the husband of a bad wife. What is one man's
meat may be another man's poison. To some persons we might say, "If you
marry you do well, but if you marry not you do better." In the case of
others marriage may have decidedly the advantage. Like most other things
marriage is good or bad according to the use or abuse we make of it. The
applause that is usually given to persons on entering the matrimonial
stage is, to say the least, premature. Let us wait to see how they will
play their parts.
And here we must protest against the foolish and cowardly ridicule that
is sometimes bestowed upon elderly men and women who, using the liberty
of a free country, have abstained from marrying. Certainly some of them
could give reasons for spending their lives outside the temple of Hymen
that are far more honourable than the motives which induced their
foolish detractors to rush in. Some have never found their other selves,
or circumstances prevented the junction of these selves. And which is
more honourable--a life of loneliness or a loveless marriage? There are
others who have laid down their hopes of wedded bliss for the sake of
accomplishing some good work, or for the sake of a father, mother,
sister, or brother. In such cases celibacy is an honourable and may be a
praiseworthy state.
To make "old maid" a term of reproach has mischievous results, and
causes many an ill-assorted marriage. Girls have been hurried into
marriage by the dread of being so stigmatized who have repented the step
to their dying day. The sacredness of marriage and the serious
responsibilities it brings are either ignored altogether or but lightly
considered when marriage is represented as the only profession for
women. There is no truth in Brigham Young's doctrine that only a woman
_sealed_ to a man in marriage can possibly be saved.
Let mothers teach their daughters that although a well-assorted marriage
based upon mutual love and esteem may be the happiest calling for a
woman, yet that marriage brings its peculiar trials as well as special
joys, and that it is quite possible for a woman to be both useful and
happy, although youth be fled, and the crowning joys of life--wife and
motherhood--have passed her by or been voluntarily surrendered.
But this fact that celibacy has many consolations need not prevent the
conclusion that as a rule married life is to be preferred.
"Jeanie," said an old Cameronian to his daughter, who was asking his
permission to marry--"Jeanie, it's a very solemn thing to get married."
"I ken that, father," said the sensible lassie, "but it's a great deal
solemner to be single."
Marriages are made in heaven: matrimony in itself is good, but there are
fools who turn every blessing into a curse, like the man who said, "This
is a good rope, I'll hang myself with it."