HUSBANDS HAVE DUTIES TOO.
"A good wife is the gift of a good God, and the workmanship of a
good husband."--_Proverb._
"My dear sir, mind your studies, mind your business, _make your
lady happy_, and be a good Christian."--_Dr. Johnson's advice to
Boswell._
A highland horse dealer, who lately effected a sale, was offered a
bottle of porter to confess the animal's failings. The bottle was drunk,
and he then said the horse had but two faults. When turned loose in the
field he was "bad to catch," and he was "of no use when caught." Many a
poor woman might say the same of her husband. She had to make many nets,
for he was "bad to catch," and when caught--well, he forgot that
husbands have duties as well as wives. Some men can neither do without
wives nor with them; they are wretched alone, in what is called single
blessedness, and they make their homes miserable when they get married;
they are like the dog, which could not bear to be loose, and howled when
it was tied up.
There are men with whom all the pleasure of love exists in its pursuit,
and not in its possession. When a woman marries one of this class, he
seems almost to despise her from that day. Having got her into his power
he begins to bully her.
If it be true that there are more people married than keep good houses,
husbands are quite as much to blame as wives. The proverb tells us that
good wives and good plantations are made by good husbands. In the last
chapter we ventured to suggest that women should make cages as well as
nets; but all their efforts will be in vain if they have ill-birds who
foul their own nests. To complete the subject, therefore, something must
be said about the behaviour of the male bird when caught and caged.
First of all he should sing and not cry. How many women are there who
suffer from the want of a kindly love, a sweet appreciation of their
goodness and their self-sacrifice! How often will wives do tender and
loving offices, adorn the home with flowers, making it as neat as the
nest of a bird; dress their persons with elegance, and their faces with
smiles, and find as a reward for this the stolid indifference of the
block or the stupid insensibility of the lower animal! "She was a
woman," wrote one who knew her sex well; "a woman down to the very tips
of her finger-nails, and what she wanted was praise from the lips that
she loved. Do you ask what that meant? Did she want gold, or dress, or
power? No; all she wanted was that which will buy us all, and which so
few of us ever get--in a word, it was Love."
Priscilla Lammeter, in "Silas Marner," well understood the selfish way
many husbands fall into of relieving their feelings: "There's nothing
kills a man so soon as having nobody to find fault with but himself.
It's a deal the best way o' being master to let somebody else do the
ordering, and keep the blaming in your own hands. It 'ud save many a man
a stroke I believe."
"If he would only be satisfied!" Mrs. Carlyle used sometimes to complain
of Carlyle, "but I have had to learn that when he does not find fault he
is pleased, and that has to content me." On one occasion when Carlyle
was away from home Mrs. Carlyle described her charwoman sort of work to
get all in perfect order for her husband's arrival; and when all was
complete--his dinner ready, his arm-chair in its usual attitude, his
pipe and tobacco prepared, all looking as comfortable as possible--Mrs.
C. sat down at last to rest, and to expect him with a quiet mind. He
arrived; and "after he had just greeted me, what do you think he did? He
walked to the window and shook it, and asked 'Where's the wedge of the
window?' and until we had found that blessed wedge nothing would content
him. He said the window would rattle and spoil all." When a great and
good man gives such inordinate prominence to trivial worries, how
intolerable to live with must be the baser sort, who scarcely know the
meaning of self-control!
Some men may deserve rewards for distinguished service in action; but
they certainly do not for distinguished service in passion or suffering.
In this respect they are far less brave than women.
The fault of many husbands is not the absence of love, but their failure
to express it in their daily lives, and the self-absorption which
prevents them from knowing that their wives want something more than
they give them. They do not pay that attention to little things on which
so much of a woman's happiness depends.
"Instead of love being the occasion of all the misery of this world (as
is sung by fantastic bards), the misery of this world is occasioned by
there not being love enough." Certain it is, that as time goes on
married life is not usually found to want less love, but more; not less
expression of love, but more. Caroline Perthes, writing to her husband,
is not content he should love her, but wishes the phlegmatic German
would sometimes tell her so.
Husbands would be more considerate and less exacting if they realized
the fact that a wife's work is never done. I have heard more than one
lady remark that the greatest pleasure of hotel life, and of a visit to
one's friends, is to be able to sit down to dinner without a knowledge
of what is coming in the various courses.
The wife whose sympathy is always ready for her husband's out-of-door
difficulties naturally expects that he should at least try to understand
her housekeeping troubles. How many they are is known to every one who
has "run" a house for even a short time. A woman may have much
theoretical knowledge, but this will not prevent unlooked-for obstacles
from arising. Annoyances caused by human frailty and the working of
natural agents beset every practical housekeeper.
It is the unexpected that constantly happens, and the daily girding up
to meet the emergencies of the hour is the task of every wife who seeks
to make her home a comfortable, habitable abode. It is work--real,
earnest work, quite as hard in its way as the husband's.
Husbands should know the value and the difficulty of the work of their
wives, and should never forget that a little help is worth a great deal
of fault-finding.
The husband's affection must never be merged in an overweening conceit
of his authority. His rule must be the rule of reason and kindness, not
of severity and caprice. He is the houseband and should bind all
together like a corner-stone, but not crush everything like a
mill-stone. Jeremy Taylor says: "The dominion of a man over his wife is
no other than as the soul rules the body; for which it takes mighty
care, and uses it with a delicate tenderness, and cares for it in all
contingencies, and watches to keep it from all evils, and studies to
make for it fair provisions, and very often is led by its inclinations
and desires, and does never contradict its appetites but when they are
evil, and then also not without some trouble and sorrow; and its
government comes only to this, it furnishes the body with light and
understanding; and the body furnishes the soul with hands and feet; the
soul governs, because the body cannot else be happy; but the
_government_ is no other than _provision_, as a nurse governs a child,
when she causes him to eat, and to be warm, and dry, and quiet."
It sometimes happens that she who ought to have most influence on her
husband's mind has least. A man will frequently take the advice of a
stranger who cares not for him, in preference to the cordial and
sensible opinion of his own wife. Consideration of the domestic evils
such a line of conduct is calculated to produce ought to prevent its
adoption. Besides, there is in woman an intuitive quickness, a
penetration, and a foresight, that make her advice very valuable. "If I
was making up a plan of consequence," said Lord Bolingbroke, "I should
like first to consult with a sensible woman." Many a man has been ruined
by professed friends, because when his wife, with a woman's quick
detection of character, saw through them and urged him to give them up,
he would not do so. And if a wife is the partner of her husband's cares
surely she ought also to be the companion of his pleasures. There are
selfish husbands who go about amusing themselves; but in reference to
their wives they seem to be of the same opinion as the ancient
philosopher, who only approved of women leaving home three times in
their lives--to be baptized, married, and buried! Does it never occur to
such Egyptian taskmasters that all work and no play is quite as bad for
women as for men, and that the wife who makes her cage comfortable
should occasionally be offered and even urged to take a little
amusement? I know of one wife who struck under such treatment. Whenever
her husband spent his money and time too freely away from home, she used
to take her child and go for a little excursion, which of course cost
money. If he gave more "drinks" than he could afford to himself and to
his club-companions, she used to frighten him into good behaviour by
ordering a bottle of champagne for herself. Giving in this way a Roland
for every Oliver, this really good wife soon brought her husband to see
that his selfishness was a losing game.
Cobbett protests against a husband getting to like his club, or indeed
any house, better than his own. When absent from necessity, there is no
wound given to the heart of the wife; she concludes that her husband
would be with her if he could, and that satisfies. Yet in these cases
her feelings ought to be consulted as much as possible; she ought to be
apprised of the probable duration of the absence, and of the time of
return.
And what Cobbett preached upon this text he himself practised. He and a
friend called Finnerty were dining with a mutual friend. At eleven
o'clock Cobbett said to the host, "We must go; my wife will be
frightened." "You do not mean to go home to-night," was the reply. "I
told him I did; and then sent my son, who was with us, to order out the
post-chaise. We had twenty-three miles to go, during which we debated
the question whether Mrs. Cobbett would be up to receive us, I
contending for the affirmative and he for the negative. She was up, and
had a nice fire for us to sit down at. She had not committed the matter
to a servant; her servants and children were all in bed; and she was up,
to perform the duty of receiving her husband and his friend. 'You did
not expect him?' said Finnerty. 'To be sure I did,' said she; 'he never
disappointed me in his life.'"
We ourselves heard a wife saying to her husband only the other day, "I
would rather you had done that than given me ten pounds." What had he
done? Only put himself out a little to return home at the exact hour he
had appointed to be with her. That the little attention gratified her so
much will not seem strange to any one who has observed the power of
little things in imparting either pleasure or pain.
A kind husband, when he goes from home, generally brings back some
little present to his wife. Attentions like this keep fresh that element
of romance which should never be entirely absent from married life. They
remind the now staid, but still impressible matron, of the days of her
maiden power, when a cold look from her brought winter into the room,
and when the faintest wish would have sent a certain young gentleman on
a walk of a dozen miles for the first violets. Yes, now and then give
your wife a present--a real present, which, without involving undue
expense, is good enough to compel a certain sacrifice, and suitable
enough to make her cheek flush with delight at seeing that just as the
bride was dearer than the sweetheart, the wife is yet dearer than the
bride. There is quite as much human nature in a wife as in a husband
(men forget this), and a little tender petting does her a great deal of
good, and may even be better than presents.
What a model husband and father Macaulay would have been if he had
married! His sister, Lady Trevelyan, says, that "those who did not know
him at home, never knew him in his most brilliant, witty, and fertile
vein." He was life and sunshine to young and old in the sombre house in
Great Ormond Street, where the forlorn old father, like a blighted oak,
lingered on in leafless decay, reading one long sermon to his family on
Sunday afternoons, and another long sermon on Sunday evenings--"where
Sunday walking for walking's sake was never allowed, and even going to a
distant church was discouraged." Through this Puritanic gloom Macaulay
shot like a sunbeam, and turned it into a fairy scene of innocent
laughter and mirth. Against Macaulay, the author, severe things may be
said; but as to his conduct in his own home--as a son, as a brother, and
an uncle--it is only the barest justice to say that he appears to have
touched the furthest verge of human virtue, sweetness, and generosity.
His thinking was often, if not generally, pitched in what we must call
a low key, but his action might put the very saints to shame. He
reversed a practice too common among men of genius, who are often
careful to display all their shining and attractive qualities to the
outside world, and keep for home consumption their meanness,
selfishness, and ill-temper. Macaulay struck no heroic attitude of
benevolence, magnanimity, and aspiration before the world--rather the
opposite; but in the circle of his home affections he practised those
virtues without letting his right hand know what was done by his left.
Writing to his oldest and dearest friend in the first days of her
overwhelming grief, Her Majesty the Queen described the Prince Consort
as having been to her "husband, father, lover, master, friend, adviser,
and guide." There could scarcely be a better description of what a
husband ought to be.