THE CHOICE OF A HUSBAND.
"How shall I know if I do choose the right?"--_Shakespeare._
"God, the best maker of marriages, bless you!"--_Ibid._
"And while thou livest, dear Kate, take a fellow of plain and
uncoined constancy; for he perforce must do thee right, because
he hath not the gift to woo in other places; for these fellows of
infinite tongue, that can rhyme themselves into ladies' favours,
they do always reason themselves out again. What! a speaker is
but a prater; a rhyme is but a ballad. A good leg will fall; a
straight back will stoop; a black beard will turn white; a curled
pate will grow bald; a fair face will wither; a full eye will wax
hollow; but a good heart, Kate, is the sun and the moon; or,
rather, the sun, and not the moon; for it shines bright, and
never changes, but keeps his course truly."--_Ibid._
They that enter into the state of marriage cast a die of the greatest
contingency, and yet of the greatest interest in the world, next to the
last throw for eternity. Life or death, felicity or a lasting sorrow,
are in the power of marriage. A woman, indeed, ventures most, for she
hath no sanctuary to retire to from an evil husband; she must dwell
upon her sorrow and hatch the eggs which her own folly or infelicity
hath produced; and she is more under it, because her tormentor hath a
warrant of prerogative, and the woman may complain to God, as subjects
do of tyrant princes; but otherwise she hath no appeal in the causes of
unkindness. And though the man can run from many hours of his sadness,
yet he must return to it again; and when he sits among his neighbours he
remembers the objection that is in his bosom, and he sighs deeply. "The
boys and the pedlars and the fruiterers shall tell of this man when he
is carried to his grave that he lived and died a poor, wretched person."
In these words Jeremy Taylor puts before men and women the issues of
choice in matrimony. What, however, concerns us in this chapter is that
"a woman ventures most." "Love is of man's life a thing apart, 'tis
woman's whole existence." How important that a treasure which is dear as
life itself should be placed in safe keeping! And yet so blind is love
that defects often seem to be virtues, deformity assumes the style of
beauty, and even hideous vices have appeared under an attractive form.
In Shakespeare's play Cleopatra speaks of an old attachment which she
had lived to despise as having arisen in her "salad days," when she was
green in judgment. In extreme youth love is especially blind, and for
this, as well as for other reasons, girls, who are yet at school, do not
consult their best interests when they allow love to occupy their too
youthful minds. It prevents the enjoyment of happy years of maidenhood,
and sometimes leads to marriage before the girl is fit, either
physically, mentally, or domestically, for the cares of married life.
"I believe," says R. W. Dale, of Birmingham, "in falling in love. The
imagination should be kindled and the heart touched; there should be
enthusiasm and even romance in the happy months that precede marriage,
and something of the enthusiasm and romance should remain to the very
end of life, or else the home is wanting in its perfect happiness and
grace. But take my word for it, solid virtues are indispensable to the
security and happiness of a home."
You would not like to live with a liar, with a thief, with a drunkard,
for twenty or thirty years. A lazy man will make but a weak band or
support for his and your house; so will one deficient in fortitude--that
is, the power to bear pain and trouble without whining. Beware of the
selfish man, for though he may be drawn out of selfishness in the early
weeks of courtship, he will settle back into it again when the wear and
worry of life come on. And remember that a man may have the roots of
some of these vices in him and yet be extremely agreeable and
good-looking, dress well, and say very pretty and charming things. "How
easy is it for the proper-false in women's waxen hearts to set their
forms!"
In their haste to be married many women are too easily satisfied with
the characters of men who may offer themselves as husbands. They aim at
matrimony in the abstract; not _the_ man, but any man. They would not
engage a servant if all they knew of her were that she had, as a
housemaid lately advertised, "a fortnight's character from her last
place;" but with even less information as to their characters they will
accept husbands and vow to love, honour, and obey them! In comparison
how much more honourable and how much less unloved and unloving is the
spinster's lot! Women marry simply for a home because they have not been
trained to fight the battle of life for themselves, and because their
lives are so dull and stagnant that they think any change must be for
the better.
A friend--let us say Barlow--was describing to Jerrold the story of his
courtship and marriage: how his wife had been brought up in a convent,
and was on the point of taking the veil, when his presence burst upon
her enraptured sight. Jerrold listened to the end of the story, and by
way of comment said, "Ah! she evidently thought Barlow better than nun."
When girls have been given work in the world they do not think that any
husband is better than none, and they have not time to imagine
themselves in love with the first man who proposes. How often is it the
case that people think themselves in love when in fact they are only
idle!
There are hearts all the better for keeping; they become mellower and
more worth a woman's acceptance than the crude, unripe things that are
sometimes gathered--as children gather green fruit--to the discomfort of
those who obtain them. A husband may be too young to properly appreciate
and take care of a wife. And yet perhaps the majority of girls would
rather be a young man's slave than an old man's darling. "My dear," said
a father to his daughter, "I intend that you should be married, but not
that you should throw yourself away on any wild, worthless boy: you must
marry a man of sober and mature age. What do you think of a fine,
intelligent husband of fifty?" "I think two of twenty-five would be
better, papa."
Prophecies as to the probable result of a marriage are as a rule little
to be trusted. It was so in the case of the celebrated Madame Necker.
She had been taken to Paris to live with a young widow, to whom
Necker--a financier from Geneva--came to pay his addresses. The story
goes that the widow, in order to rid herself of her admirer, got him to
transfer his addresses to her young companion, saying to herself, "they
will bore each other to death, that will give them something to do." The
happy pair, however, had no such foreboding. "I am marrying a man,"
wrote the lady, "whom I should believe to be an angel, if his great love
for me did not show his weakness." In his way the husband was equally
satisfied. "I account myself as happy as it is possible for a man to
be," he wrote to a mutual friend; and to the end of the chapter there
was no flaw in that matrimonial life.
Never to marry a genius was the advice of Mrs. Carlyle. "I married for
ambition. Carlyle has exceeded all that my wildest hopes ever imagined
of him, and I am miserable." As the supply of geniuses is very limited,
this advice may seem superfluous. It is not so, however, for there is
enough and to spare of men who think that they are geniuses, and take
liberties accordingly. These are very often only sons of fond but
foolish mothers, who have persuaded them that they are not made of
common clay, and that the girls who get them will be blessed. From such
a blessing young women should pray to be delivered.
Perhaps it may be said that though it is easy to write about choosing a
husband, for the majority of English girls, at least, there is but
little choice in the matter. Dickens certainly told an American
story--very American--of a young lady on a voyage, who, being intensely
loved by five young men, was advised to "jump overboard and marry the
man who jumped in after her." Accordingly, next morning the five lovers
being on deck, and looking very devotedly at the young lady, she plunged
into the sea. Four of the lovers immediately jumped in after her. When
the young lady and four lovers were out again, she said to the captain,
"What am I to do with them now, they are so wet?" "Take the dry one."
And the young lady did, and married him. How different is the state of
affairs on this side of the Atlantic, where, if a young woman is to be
married, she must take not whom she will, but whom she can. "Oh me, the
word choose! I may neither choose whom I would, nor refuse whom I
dislike." But is it necessary to marry? Far better to have no husband
than a bad one.
There is a great deal of human nature in the account which Artemus Ward
gives of the many affecting ties which made him hanker after Betsy Jane.
"Her father's farm jined our'n; their cows and our'n squencht their
thurst at the same spring; our old mares both had stars in their
forrerds; the measles broke out in both famerlies at nearly the same
period; our parients (Betsy's and mine) slept reglarly every Sunday in
the same meetin-house, and the nabers used to obsarve, 'How thick the
Wards and Peasleys air!' It was a surblime site, in the spring of the
year, to see our sevral mothers (Betsy's and mine) with their gowns
pin'd up so thay couldn't sile 'em affecshunitly bilin sope together and
aboozin the nabers."
In this matter more than in most others "we do not will according to our
reason, we reason according to our will." True desire, the monition of
nature, is much to be attended to. But always we are to discriminate
carefully between _true_ desire and false. The medical men tell us we
should eat what we _truly_ have an appetite for; but what we only
_falsely_ have an appetite for we should resolutely avoid. Ought not
choice in matrimony to be guided by the same principle?
Above all things young ladies should ask God, the best maker of
marriages, to direct their choice aright.