PULLING TOGETHER.
"When souls, that should agree to will the same,
To have one common object for their wishes,
Look different ways, regardless of each other,
Think what a train of wretchedness ensues!"
Said a husband to his angry wife: "Look at Carlo and Kitty asleep on the
rug; I wish men lived half as agreeably with their wives." "Stop!" said
the lady. "Tie them together, and see how they will agree!" If men and
women when tied together sometimes agree very badly what is the reason?
Because instead of pulling together each of them wishes to have his or
her own way. But when they do pull together what greater thing is there
for them than "to feel that they are joined for life, to strengthen each
other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to
each other in all pain, to be one with each other in the silent
unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?"
What is meant by pulling together may be explained by referring to the
custom of the "Dunmow flitch," which was founded by Juga, a noble lady,
in A.D. IIII, and restored by Robert de Fitzwalter, in 1244. It was that
any person from any part of England going to Dunmow in Essex, and humbly
kneeling on two stones at the church door, may claim a gammon of bacon
if he can swear that for twelve months and a day he has never had a
household brawl or wished himself unmarried. Hence the phrase "He may
fetch a flitch of bacon from Dunmow," _i.e._, He is so amiable and
good-tempered that he will never quarrel with his wife. To eat Dunmow
bacon is to live in conjugal amity. There were only eight claimants
admitted to eat the flitch between the years 1244-1772, a number that
seems to justify Prior's sarcastic couplet:
"Ah, madam, cease to be mistaken,
Few married fowl peck Dunmow bacon."
It is a great pity that "few married fowl peck Dunmow bacon," for those
that do are so happy that they may be called birds of Paradise.
"A well-matched couple carry a joyful life between them, as the two
spies carried the cluster of Eshcol. They multiply their joys by sharing
them, and lessen their troubles by dividing them: this is fine
arithmetic. The waggon of care rolls lightly along as they pull
together, and when it drags a little heavily, or there's a hitch
anywhere, they love each other all the more, and so lighten the labour."
When there is wisdom in the husband there is generally gentleness in the
wife, and between them the old wedding wish is worked out: "One year of
joy, another of comfort, and all the rest of content."
When two persons without any spiritual affinity are bound together in
irrevocable bondage, it is to their "unspeakable weariness and despair,"
and life becomes to them "a drooping and disconsolate household
captivity, without refuge or redemption." Such unions are marriages only
in name. They are a mere housing together.
However, this doctrine may easily be exaggerated, and certainly married
people ought to be very slow in allowing themselves to think that it is
impossible for them to hit it off or pull with the partners of their
lives. Those who cherish unhealthy sentimentalism on this subject would
do well to brace themselves up by reading a little of the robust common
sense of Dr. Johnson. Talking one evening of Mrs. Careless, the doctor
said: "If I had married her, it might have been as happy for me."
_Boswell_: "Pray, sir, do you not suppose that there are fifty women in
the world, with any one of whom a man may be as happy as with any one
woman in particular?" _Johnson_: "Ay, sir, fifty thousand." _Boswell_:
"Then, sir, you are not of opinion with some who imagine that certain
men and certain women are made for each other; and that they cannot be
happy if they miss their counterparts." _Johnson_: "To be sure not, sir.
I believe marriages would in general be as happy, and often more so, if
they were all made by the Lord Chancellor, upon a due consideration of
the characters and circumstances, without the parties having any choice
in the matter."
The following, too, is interesting, for we may gather from it how, in
Johnson's opinion, the feat of living happily with any one of fifty
thousand women could be accomplished. The question was started one
evening whether people who differed on some essential point could live
in friendship together. Johnson said they might. Goldsmith said they
could not, as they had not the _idem velle atque idem nolle_--the same
likings and the same aversions. _Johnson_: "Why, sir, you must shun the
subject as to which you disagree. For instance, I can live very well
with Burke; I love his knowledge, his genius, his diffusion, and
affluence of conversation; but I would not talk to him of the Rockingham
party." _Goldsmith_: "But, sir, when people live together who have
something as to which they disagree, and which they want to shun, they
will be in the situation mentioned in the story of Bluebeard, 'You may
look into all the chambers but one.' But we should have the greatest
inclination to look into that chamber, to talk over that subject."
_Johnson_ (with a loud voice): "Sir, I am not saying that _you_ could
live in friendship with a man from whom you differ as to some point: I
am only saying that _I_ could do it."
In matrimony, as in religion, in things essential there should be unity,
in things indifferent diversity, in all things charity.
In matrimony, though it is the closest and dearest friendship, shades of
character and the various qualities of mind and heart, never approximate
to such a degree, as to preclude all possibility of misunderstanding.
But the broad and firm principles upon which all honourable and enduring
sympathy is founded, the love of truth, the reverence for right, the
abhorrence of all that is base and unworthy, admit of no difference or
misunderstanding; and where these exist in the relations of two people
united for life, love, and happiness, as perfect as this imperfect
existence affords, may be realized. But the rule is different in
matters that are not essential. In reference to these married people
should cultivate "the sympathy of difference." They should agree to
differ each respecting the tastes and prejudices of the other.
At no time are husbands and wives seen to greater advantage than when
yielding their own will in unimportant matters to the will of another,
and we quite agree with a writer who makes the following remark: "Great
actions are so often performed from little motives of vanity,
self-complacency, and the like, that I am apt to think more highly of
the person whom I observe checking a reply to a petulant speech, or even
submitting to the judgment of another _in stirring the fire_, than of
one who gives away thousands!"
In all things there should be charity. Dolly Winthrop in "Silas Marner"
was patiently tolerant of her husband, "considering that men would be
so," and viewing the stronger sex "in the light of animals whom it
pleased Heaven to make troublesome like bulls or turkey cocks." This
sensible woman knew that if at times her husband was troublesome he had
his good qualities. On these she would accustom herself to dwell.
A Scotch minister, being one day engaged in visiting his flock, came to
the door of a house where his gentle tapping could not be heard for the
noise of contention within. After waiting a little he opened the door
and walked in, saying, with an authoritative voice: "I should like to
know who is the head of this house?" "Weel, sir," said the husband and
father, "if ye sit doon a wee, we'll maybe be able to tell ye, for we're
just tryin' to settle the point." Merely to settle this point some
married people are continually engaging in a tug of war instead of
pulling comfortably together. But what a mean contest! How much better
it would be only to strive who should love the other most! To married
people especially are these words of Marcus Aurelius applicable: "We are
made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the
rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act against one another, then, is
contrary to nature."
That union is strength is forcibly, if not very elegantly, illustrated
by Erskine's description of a lodging where he had passed the night. He
said that the fleas were so numerous and so ferocious that if they had
been but _unanimous_ they would have pulled him out of bed. If husband
and wife would be but unanimous they would be a match against every
enemy to their felicity. On the other hand, how impossible it is for
those who work against each other to live together with any advantage or
comfort. We all remember the illustration of AEsop. A charcoal-burner
carried on his trade in his own house. One day he met a friend, a
fuller, and entreated him to come and live with him, saying that they
should be far better neighbours, and that their housekeeping expenses
would be lessened. The fuller replied, "The arrangement is impossible as
far as I am concerned, for whatever I should whiten, you would
immediately blacken again with your charcoal."
One secret of pulling together is not to interfere with what does not
concern us. A man who can trust his wife should no more meddle with her
home concerns than she should pester him with questions about his
business. He will never be able to pull with her if he pokes over the
weekly bills, insists on knowing how much each thing is per pound, and
what he is going to have every day for dinner. It is indeed almost a
_sine qua non_ of domestic felicity that _paterfamilias_ should be
absent from home at least six hours in the day. Jones asked his wife,
"Why is a husband like dough?" He expected she would give it up, and he
was going to tell her that it was because a woman needs him; but she
said it was because he was hard to get off her hands.
Of course, like every other good rule, this one of non-intervention may
be carried too far, as it was by the studious man who said, when a
servant told him that his house was on fire, "Go to your mistress, you
know I have no charge of household matters." No doubt occasions will
arise when a husband will be only too glad to take counsel with his wife
in business cares; while she may have to remember all her life long,
with gratitude and love, some season of sickness or affliction, when he
filled his own place and hers too, ashamed of no womanish task, and
neither irritated nor humiliated by ever such trivial household cares.
"Parents and children seldom act in concert, each child endeavours to
appropriate the esteem or fondness of the parents, and the parents, with
yet less temptation, betray each other to their children; thus some
place their confidence in the father, and some in the mother, and by
degrees the house is filled with artifices and feuds." These words point
to a danger to be guarded against by married people who desire to pull
together. It is sad when a child is not loved equally by both its
parents. In this case, however innocent and blessed the little one may
be, it is liable to become the disturber of parental peace.
Perhaps the way Carlyle and his wife pulled together is not so very
uncommon. His mother used to say of him that he was "gey ill to live
with," and Miss Welsh whom he married had a fiery temper. When provoked
she "was as hard as a flint, with possibilities of dangerous sparks of
fire." The pair seem to have tormented each other, but not half as much
as each tormented him and herself. They were too like each other,
suffering in the same way from nerves disordered, digestion impaired,
excessive self-consciousness, and the absence of children to take their
thoughts away from each other. They were, in the fullest sense of the
word, everything to each other--both for good and evil, sole comforters,
chief tormentors. The proverb "Ill to hae but waur to want" was true of
the Carlyles as of many another couple.
Sir David Baird and some other English officers, being captured by Tippo
Saib, were confined for some time in one of the dungeons of his palace
at Bangalore. When Sir David's mother heard the news in Scotland,
referring to the method in which prisoners were chained together and to
her son's well-known irascible temper, she exclaimed: "God pity the lad
that's tied to our Davie." How much more to be pitied is he or she whom
matrimony has tied for life to a person with a bad temper!
Over-particularity in trifles causes a great deal of domestic
discomfort. The husband or wife who, to use a common phrase, wishes a
thing to be "just so," and not otherwise, is uncomfortable to pull with.
For any person to be thoroughly amiable and livable with, there should
be a little touch of untidiness and unpreciseness, and indifference to
small things. A little spice--not too much--of the Irishman's spirit
who said, "If you can't take things asy, take them as asy as you can."
There is no more beautiful quality than that ideality which conceives
and longs after perfection; but if too exclusively cultivated it may
drag down rather than elevate its possessor. The faculty which is ever
conceiving and desiring something better and more perfect must be
modified in its action by good sense, patience, and conscience,
otherwise it induces a morbid, discontented spirit, which courses
through the veins of individual and family life like a subtle poison.
Exactingsness is untrained ideality, and much domestic misery is caused
by it. A little bit of conscience makes the exacting person sour. He
fusses, fumes, finds fault, and scolds because everything is not perfect
in an imperfect world. Much more happy and good is he whose conceptions
and desire of excellence are equally strong, but in whom there is a
greater amount of discriminating common-sense.
Most people can see what is faulty in themselves and their surroundings;
but while the dreamer frets and wears himself out over the unattainable,
the happy, practical man is satisfied with what _can_ be attained. There
was much wisdom in the answer given by the principal of a large public
institution when complimented on his habitual cheerfulness amid a
diversity of cares: "I've made up my mind," he said, "to be satisfied
when things are done _half_ as well as I would have them."
Ideality often becomes an insidious mental and moral disease, acting all
the more subtlely from its alliance with what is noblest in us.
The virtue of conscientiousness may turn into the vice of censoriousness
if misapplied. It was the constant prayer of the great and good Bishop
Butler that he might be saved from what he called "scrupulosity." Dr.
Johnson used to admire this wise sentence in Thomas a Kempis: "Be not
angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you
cannot make yourself as you wish to be." Searching for domestic
happiness would not be as unsuccessful as it is with some people if they
were not continually finding fault.
Jeremy Taylor impresses this fact by one of his quaint illustrations:
"The stags in the Greek epigram, whose knees were clogged with frozen
snow upon the mountains, came down to the brooks of the valleys, hoping
to thaw their joints with the waters of the stream; but there the frost
overtook them, and bound them fast in ice, till the young herdsmen took
them in their stranger snare. It is the unhappy chance of many men
finding many inconveniences upon the mountains of single life, they
descend into the valleys of marriage to refresh their troubles, and
there they enter into fetters, and are bound to sorrow by the cords of a
man's or woman's peevishness."
The Psalmist says that "God maketh men to be of one mind in a house."
Let husband and wife live near Him, and He will enable them to avoid
domestic strife which Cowper declares to be the "sorest ill of human
life."