As to what actual marriage is, one would like evidence instead
of guesses; but as all departures from the ideal are regarded as
disgraceful, evidence cannot be obtained; for when the whole community
is indicted, nobody will go into the witness-box for the prosecution.
Some guesses we can make with some confidence. For example, if it be
objected to any change that our bachelors and widowers would no longer
be Galahads, we may without extravagance or cynicism reply that many
of them are not Galahads now, and that the only change would be that
hypocrisy would no longer be compulsory. Indeed, this can hardly be
called guessing: the evidence is in the streets. But when we attempt to
find out the truth about our marriages, we cannot even guess with
any confidence. Speaking for myself, I can say that I know the inside
history of perhaps half a dozen marriages. Any family solicitor knows
more than this; but even a family solicitor, however large his practice,
knows nothing of the million households which have no solicitors, and
which nevertheless make marriage what it really is. And all he can say
comes to no more than I can say: to wit, that no marriage of which I
have any knowledge is in the least like the ideal marriage. I do not
mean that it is worse: I mean simply that it is different. Also, far
from society being organized in a defence of its ideal so jealous and
implacable that the least step from the straight path means exposure
and ruin, it is almost impossible by any extravagance of misconduct to
provoke society to relax its steady pretence of blindness, unless you do
one or both of two fatal things. One is to get into the newspapers; and
the other is to confess. If you confess misconduct to respectable men or
women, they must either disown you or become virtually your accomplices:
that is why they are so angry with you for confessing. If you get into
the papers, the pretence of not knowing becomes impossible. But it is
hardly too much to say that if you avoid these two perils, you can do
anything you like, as far as your neighbors are concerned. And since we
can hardly flatter ourselves that this is the effect of charity, it
is difficult not to suspect that our extraordinary forbearance in the
matter of stone throwing is that suggested in the well-known parable of
the women taken in adultery which some early free-thinker slipped into
the Gospel of St John: namely, that we all live in glass houses. We may
take it, then, that the ideal husband and the ideal wife are no more
real human beings than the cherubim. Possibly the great majority keeps
its marriage vows in the technical divorce court sense. No husband or
wife yet born keeps them or ever can keep them in the ideal sense.