As a single man, I have spent a good deal of my time in noting down
the infirmities of Married People, to console myself for those
superior pleasures, which they tell me I have lost by remaining as I
am.
I cannot say that the quarrels of men and their wives ever made any
great impression upon me, or had much tendency to strengthen me in
those anti-social resolutions, which I took up long ago upon more
substantial considerations. What oftenest offends me at the houses
of married persons where I visit, is an error of quite a different
description;--it is that they are too loving.
Not too loving neither: that does not explain my meaning. Besides,
why should that offend me? The very act of separating themselves from
the rest of the world, to have the fuller enjoyment of each other's
society, implies that they prefer one another to all the world.
But what I complain of is, that they carry this preference so
undisguisedly, they perk it up in the faces of us single people so
shamelessly, you cannot be in their company a moment without being
made to feel, by some indirect hint or open avowal, that _you_ are not
the object of this preference. Now there are some things which give
no offence, while implied or taken for granted merely; but expressed,
there is much offence in them. If a man were to accost the first
homely-featured or plain-dressed young woman of his acquaintance, and
tell her bluntly, that she was not handsome or rich enough for him,
and he could not marry her, he would deserve to be kicked for his ill
manners; yet no less is implied in the fact, that having access and
opportunity of putting the question to her, he has never yet thought
fit to do it. The young woman understands this as clearly as if it
were put into words; but no reasonable young woman would think of
making this the ground of a quarrel. Just as little right have a
married couple to tell me by speeches, and looks that are scarce less
plain than speeches, that I am not the happy man,--the lady's choice.
It is enough that I know I am not: I do not want this perpetual
reminding.
The display of superior knowledge or riches may be made sufficiently
mortifying; but these admit of a palliative. The knowledge which is
brought out to insult me, may accidentally improve me; and in the rich
man's houses and pictures,--his parks and gardens, I have a temporary
usufruct at least. But the display of married happiness has none of
these palliatives: it is throughout pure, unrecompensed, unqualified
insult.
Marriage by its best title is a monopoly, and not of the least
invidious sort. It is the cunning of most possessors of any exclusive
privilege to keep their advantage as much out of sight as possible,
that their less favoured neighbours, seeing little of the benefit,
may the less be disposed to question the right. But these married
monopolists thrust the most obnoxious part of their patent into our
faces.
Nothing is to me more distasteful than that entire complacency and
satisfaction which beam in the countenances of a new-married couple,
in that of the lady particularly: it tells you, that her lot is
disposed of in this world: that _you_ can have no hopes of her.
It is true, I have none; nor wishes either, perhaps: but this is
one of those truths which ought, as I said before, to be taken for
granted, not expressed. The excessive airs which those people give
themselves, founded on the ignorance of us unmarried people, would be
more offensive if they were less irrational. We will allow them to
understand the mysteries belonging to their own craft better than we
who have not had the happiness to be made free of the company: but
their arrogance is not content within these limits. If a single person
presume to offer his opinion in their presence, though upon the most
indifferent subject, he is immediately silenced as an incompetent
person. Nay, a young married lady of my acquaintance, who, the best
of the jest was, had not changed her condition above a fortnight
before, in a question on which I had the misfortune to differ from
her, respecting the properest mode of breeding oysters for the London
market, had the assurance to ask with a sneer, how such an old
Bachelor as I could pretend to know any thing about such matters.
But what I have spoken of hitherto is nothing to the airs which these
creatures give themselves when they come, as they generally do,
to have children. When I consider how little of a rarity children
are,--that every street and blind alley swarms with them,--that the
poorest people commonly have them in most abundance,--that there
are few marriages that are not blest with at least one of these
bargains,--how often they turn out ill, and defeat the fond hopes
of their parents, taking to vicious courses, which end in poverty,
disgrace, the gallows, &c.--I cannot for my life tell what cause
for pride there can possibly be in having them. If they were young
phoenixes, indeed, that were born but one in a year, there might be a
pretext. But when they are so common--
I do not advert to the insolent merit which they assume with their
husbands on these occasions. Let them look to that. But why _we_, who
are not their natural-born subjects, should be expected to bring our
spices, myrrh, and incense,--our tribute and homage of admiration,--I
do not see.
"Like as the arrows in the hand of the giant, even so are the young
children:" so says the excellent office in our Prayer-book appointed
for the churching of women. "Happy is the man that hath his quiver
full of them:" So say I; but then don't let him discharge his
quiver upon us that are weaponless;--let them be arrows, but not to
gall and stick us. I have generally observed that these arrows are
double-headed: they have two forks, to be sure to hit with one or the
other. As for instance, when you come into a house which is full of
children, if you happen to take no notice of them (you are thinking
of something else, perhaps, and turn a deaf ear to their innocent
caresses), you are set down as untractable, morose, a hater of
children. On the other hand, if you find them more than usually
engaging,--if you are taken with their pretty manners, and set about
in earnest to romp and play with them, some pretext or other is sure
to be found for sending them out of the room: they are too noisy or
boisterous, or Mr. ---- does not like children. With one or other of
these forks the arrow is sure to hit you.
I could forgive their jealousy, and dispense with toying with their
brats, if it gives them any pain; but I think it unreasonable to be
called upon to _love_ them, where I see no occasion,--to love a whole
family, perhaps, eight, nine, or ten, indiscriminately,--to love all
the pretty dears, because children are so engaging.
I know there is a proverb, "Love me, love my dog:" that is not always
so very practicable, particularly if the dog be set upon you to tease
you or snap at you in sport. But a dog, or a lesser thing,--any
inanimate substance, as a keep-sake, a watch or a ring, a tree, or
the place where we last parted when my friend went away upon a long
absence, I can make shift to love, because I love him, and any thing
that reminds me of him; provided it be in its nature indifferent, and
apt to receive whatever hue fancy can give it. But children have a
real character and an essential being of themselves: they are amiable
or unamiable _per se_; I must love or hate them as I see cause for
either 'in their qualities. A child's nature is too serious a thing to
admit of its being regarded as a mere appendage to another being, and
to be loved or hated accordingly: they stand with me upon their own
stock, as much as men and women do. O! but you will say, sure it is
an attractive age,--there is something in the tender years of infancy
that of itself charms us. That is the very reason why I am more nice
about them. I know that a sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature,
not even excepting the delicate creatures which bear them; but the
prettier the kind of a thing is, the more desirable it is that it
should be pretty of its kind. One daisy differs not much from another
in glory; but a violet should look and smell the daintiest.--I was
always rather squeamish in my women and children.
But this is not the worst: one must be admitted into their familiarity
at least, before they can complain of inattention. It implies visits,
and some kind of intercourse. But if the husband be a man with whom
you have lived on a friendly footing before marriage,--if you did not
come in on the wife's side,--if you did not sneak into the house in
her train, but were an old friend in fast habits of intimacy before
their courtship was so much as thought on,--look about you--your
tenure is precarious--before a twelve-month shall roll over your head,
you shall find your old friend gradually grow cool and altered towards
you, and at last seek opportunities of breaking with you. I have
scarce a married friend of my acquaintance, upon whose firm faith I
can rely, whose friendship did not commence _after the period of his
marriage_. With some limitations they can endure that: but that the
good man should have dared to enter into a solemn league of friendship
in which they were not consulted, though it happened before they
knew him,--before they that are now man and wife ever met,--this
is intolerable to them. Every long friendship, every old authentic
intimacy, must be brought into their office to be new stamped with
their currency, as a sovereign Prince calls in the good old money that
was coined in some reign before he was born or thought of, to be new
marked and minted with the stamp of his authority, before he will
let it pass current in the world. You may guess what luck generally
befalls such a rusty piece of metal as I am in these _new mintings_.
Innumerable are the ways which they take to insult and worm you out
of their husband's confidence. Laughing at all you say with a kind of
wonder, as if you were a queer kind of fellow that said good things,
_but an oddity_, is one of the ways;--they have a particular kind of
stare for the purpose;--till at last the husband, who used to defer to
your judgment, and would pass over some excrescences of understanding
and manner for the sake of a general vein of observation (not quite
vulgar) which he perceived in you, begins to suspect whether you are
not altogether a humorist,--a fellow well enough to have consorted
with in his bachelor days, but not quite so proper to be introduced
to ladies. This may be called the staring way; and is that which has
oftenest been put in practice against me.
Then there is the exaggerating way, or the way of irony: that is,
where they find you an object of especial regard with their husband,
who is not so easily to be shaken from the lasting attachment founded
on esteem which he has conceived towards you; by never-qualified
exaggerations to cry up all that you say or do, till the good man,
who understands well enough that it is all done in compliment to him,
grows weary of the debt of gratitude which is due to so much candour,
and by relaxing a little on his part, and taking down a peg or two
in his enthusiasm, sinks at length to that kindly level of moderate
esteem,--that "decent affection and complacent kindness" towards you,
where she herself can join in sympathy with him without much stretch
and violence to her sincerity.
Another way (for the ways they have to accomplish so desirable
a purpose are infinite) is, with a kind of innocent simplicity,
continually to mistake what it was which first made their husband fond
of you. If an esteem for something excellent in your moral character
was that which riveted the chain which she is to break, upon any
imaginary discovery of a want of poignancy in your conversation, she
will cry, "I thought, my dear, you described your friend, Mr. ---- as
a great wit." If, on the other hand, it was for some supposed charm
in your conversation that he first grew to like you, and was content
for this to overlook some trifling irregularities in your moral
deportment, upon the first notice of any of these she as readily
exclaims, "This, my dear, is your good Mr. ----." One good lady whom
I took the liberty of expostulating with for not showing me quite so
much respect as I thought due to her husband's old friend, had the
candour to confess to me that she had often heard Mr. ---- speak
of me before marriage, and that she had conceived a great desire
to be acquainted with me, but that the sight of me had very much
disappointed her expectations; for from her husband's representations
of me, she had formed a notion that she was to see a fine, tall,
officer-like looking man (I use her very words); the very reverse of
which proved to be the truth. This was candid; and I had the civility
not to ask her in return, how she came to pitch upon a standard of
personal accomplishments for her husband's friends which differed so
much from his own; for my friend's dimensions as near as possible
approximate to mine; he standing five feet five in his shoes, in which
I have the advantage of him by about half an inch; and he no more than
myself exhibiting any indications of a martial character in his air or
countenance.
These are some of the mortifications which I have encountered in the
absurd attempt to visit at their houses. To enumerate them all would
be a vain endeavour: I shall therefore just glance at the very common
impropriety of which married ladies are guilty,--of treating us as if
we were their husbands, and _vice versâ_. I mean, when they use us
with familiarity, and their husbands with ceremony. _Testacea_, for
instance, kept me the other night two or three hours beyond my usual
time of supping, while she was fretting because Mr. ---- did not come
home, till the oysters were all spoiled, rather than she would be
guilty of the impoliteness of touching one in his absence. This was
reversing the point of good manners: for ceremony is an invention to
take off the uneasy feeling which we derive from knowing ourselves to
be less the object of love and esteem with a fellow-creature than some
other person is. It endeavours to make up, by superior attentions in
little points, for that invidious preference which it is forced to
deny in the greater. Had _Testacea_ kept the oysters back for me, and
withstood her husband's importunities to go to supper, she would have
acted according to the strict rules of propriety. I know no ceremony
that ladies are bound to observe to their husbands, beyond the point
of a modest behaviour and decorum: therefore I must protest against
the vicarious gluttony of _Cerasia_, who at her own table sent away a
dish of Morellas, which I was applying to with great good will, to her
husband at the other end of the table, and recommended a plate of
less extraordinary gooseberries to my unwedded palate in their stead.
Neither can I excuse the wanton affront of ----.
But I am weary of stringing up all my married acquaintance by Roman
denominations. Let them amend and change their manners, or I promise
to record the full-length English of their names, to the terror of all
such desperate offenders in future.