THE ENGLISH WIFE
Her position--Family life less attractive and piquant in England
than in France, but more solid--The English wife is the goddess of
a beautiful home.
The Englishman is no doubt cut out to make colonies, but less to make
love, for the simple reason that he does not know how to forget
himself, and spends the greater part of his life standing sentry at the
door of his dignity.
The Englishman loves in his own fashion, in a true and manly way,
according to his peculiar organization, which enables him to bring to
the choice of a wife the very same cool reflection, care and
discernment that he brings to all the other actions of his life. In a
word, he seldom allows himself to be 'carried away.'
This is a great superiority he has over the Frenchman, because this
cool and reflective way of loving has established the English family on
a most solid basis. The Englishman does not seek beauty in a wife.
After being married he wants to enjoy a perfect peace of mind, and, to
do him justice, I will add that money will seldom make him take a wife
who does not possess those moral and intellectual qualities that are
the foundation-stone of happiness in matrimonial life. A cheerful face
will attract him much more than a beautiful one. It is a cheerful and
useful companion he wants, not a legal mistress or a well-dressed doll.
His honeymoon lasts a month. When he settles at home, he prepares to
keep his wife in order and discipline, and to give her occupations to
fill up all her time--a house to keep and a large family to bring up.
Devotion and friendship are nowhere deeper than in the English family,
but poetry and piquancy shine by their absence. It is a prosy life
among the masses of the people.
Among these masses, even the well-to-do masses, of the people (I don't
mention the upper tens, who are alike all the world over) there is no
privacy between them--why, very often, not even a dressing-room.
The 'nonsense,' as I once heard an Englishman call the poetry of
matrimony, is soon knocked out of them. One says, 'Oh, that's all
right. It is not a man; it's only my husband'; while the other says, 'I
would not do this or that before a woman for all the world; but this is
the wife: it's all right.' And it is that kind of life that so often
causes Englishwomen of the middle class to appear so unattractive. The
blame is to be laid at the door of their husbands. In love the
Englishman is a little selfish. He forgets that the sweetest pleasures
are those we give.
* * * * *
When the French girl marries, she gains her liberty; when the English
girl marries, she often loses hers (when the American girl marries, she
retains hers). In France the wife is the friend and confidante of her
husband and often his mistress. In England she is the mistress of the
house only. And this is not always a sinecure; for she becomes
something more than a house-keeper in point of rank, but at the same
time something less, if we consider that no wages are due to her and
that she cannot give notice to leave.
In England the wife is the partner of her husband at home only. In
France she is his partner in business. It is she who keeps his books
and his cash-box, and neither was ever entrusted to better
guardianship.
An Englishman gives his wife so much a month for housekeeping and so
much for dressing and pocket money. One morning he tells her they are
going to remove to a sumptuous home. She did not know he was making his
fortune. Or maybe he will tell her at breakfast: 'I have lost
everything. We must go to Australia and start a new life.' She did not
know they were on the way to ruin; so she merely replies: 'Very well,
John. Give me time to put on my hat.'
When things are prosperous and matrimonial life happy, the Englishwoman
makes the best of wives. Her mission, which she understands so well, is
to cheer her husband in the comfort of his home and make him forget the
worry, annoyance and heartburnings that beset him out of doors in his
public, professional or commercial life; to provide for him a retreat
in the soothing atmosphere of which he can find rest and renovated
strength; to do the honours of his house with that liberality, that
provident and large-hearted hospitality, which is only to be found in
England. Such is the mission of the English wife. 'The companions of
John Bull are beautiful, healthy girls, perhaps a little too bold;
virtuous wives, perhaps a trifle too respected; excellent mothers,
perhaps a little too neglected; above all, women whose ingenious
attention to all the minor comforts of existence can turn the humblest
cottage into a little palace of order, cleanliness and well-being.'[1]
The more I examine the constitution of the English family, the more
deeply convinced I become that it is the very pedestal on which stand
solid the prosperity and the greatness of the British Empire.
[1] 'John Bull and his Island.'