XXVII.
Marriage is a science.
XXVIII.
A man ought not to marry without having studied anatomy, and dissected
at least one woman.
XXIX.
The fate of the home depends on the first night.
XXX.
A woman deprived of her free will can never have the credit of making a
sacrifice.
XXXI. In love, putting aside all consideration of the soul, the heart
of a woman is like a lyre which does not reveal its secret, excepting
to him who is a skillful player.
XXXII. Independently of any gesture of repulsion, there exists in the
soul of all women a sentiment which tends, sooner or later, to
proscribe all pleasure devoid of passionate feeling.
XXXIII.
The interest of a husband as much as his honor forbids him to indulge a
pleasure which he has not had the skill to make his wife desire.
XXXIV. Pleasure being caused by the union of sensation and sentiment,
we can say without fear of contradiction that pleasures are a sort of
material ideas.
XXXV.
As ideas are capable of infinite combination, it ought to be the same
with pleasures.
XXXVI.
In the life of man there are no two moments of pleasure exactly alike,
any more than there are two leaves of identical shape upon the same
tree.
XXXVII.
If there are differences between one moment of pleasure and another, a
man can always be happy with the same woman.
XXXVIII. To seize adroitly upon the varieties of pleasure, to develop
them, to impart to them a new style, an original expression,
constitutes the genius of a husband.
XXXIX. Between two beings who do not love each other this genius is
licentiousness; but the caresses over which love presides are always
pure.
XL.
The married woman who is the most chaste may be also the most
voluptuous.
XLI.
The most virtuous woman can be forward without knowing it.
XLII. When two human beings are united by pleasure, all social
conventionalities are put aside. This situation conceals a reef on
which many vessels are wrecked. A husband is lost, if he once forgets
there is a modesty which is quite independent of coverings. Conjugal
love ought never either to put on or to take away the bandage of its
eyes, excepting at the due season.
XLIII.
Power does not consist in striking with force or with frequency, but in
striking true.
XLIV. To call a desire into being, to nourish it, to develop it, to
bring it to full growth, to excite it, to satisfy it, is a complete
poem of itself.
XLV. The progression of pleasures is from the distich to the quatrain,
from the quatrain to the sonnet, from the sonnet to the ballad, from
the ballad to the ode, from the ode to the cantata, from the cantata to
the dithyramb. The husband who commences with dithyramb is a fool.
XLVI.
Each night ought to have its _menu_.
XLVII.
Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster which devours
everything, that is, familiarity.
XLVIII.
If a man cannot distinguish the difference between the pleasures of two
consecutive nights, he has married too early.
XLIX. It is easier to be a lover than a husband, for the same reason
that it is more difficult to be witty every day, than to say bright
things from time to time.
L.
A husband ought never to be the first to go to sleep and the last to
awaken.
LI.
The man who enters his wife’s dressing-room is either a philosopher or
an imbecile.
LII.
The husband who leaves nothing to desire is a lost man.
LIII.
The married woman is a slave whom one must know how to set upon a
throne.
LIV.
A man must not flatter himself that he knows his wife, and is making
her happy unless he sees her often at his knees.
It is to the whole ignorant troop of our predestined, of our legions of
snivelers, of smokers, of snuff-takers, of old and captious men that
Sterne addressed, in _Tristram Shandy_, the letter written by Walter
Shandy to his brother Toby, when this last proposed to marry the widow
Wadman.
These celebrated instructions which the most original of English
writers has comprised in this letter, suffice with some few exceptions
to complete our observations on the manner in which husbands should
behave to their wives; and we offer it in its original form to the
reflections of the predestined, begging that they will meditate upon it
as one of the most solid masterpieces of human wit.
“MY DEAR BROTHER TOBY,
“What I am going to say to thee is upon the nature of women, and of
love-making to them; and perhaps it is as well for thee—tho’ not so
well for me—that thou hast occasion for a letter of instructions upon
that head, and that I am able to write it to thee.
“Had it been the good pleasure of Him who disposes of our lots, and
thou no sufferer by the knowledge, I had been well content that thou
should’st have dipped the pen this moment into the ink instead of
myself; but that not being the case—Mrs. Shandy being now close beside
me, preparing for bed—I have thrown together without order, and just as
they have come into my mind, such hints and documents as I deem may be
of use to thee; intending, in this, to give thee a token of my love;
not doubting, my dear Toby, of the manner in which it will be accepted.
“In the first place, with regard to all which concerns religion in the
affair—though I perceive from a glow in my cheek, that I blush as I
begin to speak to thee upon the subject, as well knowing,
notwithstanding thy unaffected secrecy, how few of its offices thou
neglectest—yet I would remind thee of one (during the continuance of
thy courtship) in a particular manner, which I would not have omitted;
and that is, never to go forth upon the enterprise, whether it be in
the morning or in the afternoon, without first recommending thyself to
the protection of Almighty God, that He may defend thee from the evil
one.
“Shave the whole top of thy crown clean once at least every four or
five days, but oftener if convenient; lest in taking off thy wig before
her, thro’ absence of mind, she should be able to discover how much has
been cut away by Time—how much by Trim.
“’Twere better to keep ideas of baldness out of her fancy.
“Always carry it in thy mind, and act upon it as a sure maxim, Toby—
“_‘That women are timid.’_ And ’tis well they are—else there would be
no dealing with them.
“Let not thy breeches be too tight, or hang too loose about thy thighs,
like the trunk-hose of our ancestors.
“A just medium prevents all conclusions.
“Whatever thou hast to say, be it more or less, forget not to utter it
in a low soft tone of voice. Silence, and whatever approaches it,
weaves dreams of midnight secrecy into the brain: For this cause, if
thou canst help it, never throw down the tongs and poker.
“Avoid all kinds of pleasantry and facetiousness in thy discourse with
her, and do whatever lies in thy power at the same time, to keep from
her all books and writings which tend there to: there are some
devotional tracts, which if thou canst entice her to read over, it will
be well: but suffer her not to look into _Rabelais_, or _Scarron_, or
_Don Quixote_.
“They are all books which excite laughter; and thou knowest, dear Toby,
that there is no passion so serious as lust.
“Stick a pin in the bosom of thy shirt, before thou enterest her
parlor.
“And if thou art permitted to sit upon the same sofa with her, and she
gives thee occasion to lay thy hand upon hers—beware of taking it—thou
canst not lay thy hand upon hers, but she will feel the temper of
thine. Leave that and as many other things as thou canst, quite
undetermined; by so doing, thou wilt have her curiosity on thy side;
and if she is not conquered by that, and thy Asse continues still
kicking, which there is great reason to suppose—thou must begin, with
first losing a few ounces of blood below the ears, according to the
practice of the ancient Scythians, who cured the most intemperate fits
of the appetite by that means.
“_Avicenna_, after this, is for having the part anointed with the syrup
of hellebore, using proper evacuations and purges—and I believe
rightly. But thou must eat little or no goat’s flesh, nor red deer—nor
even foal’s flesh by any means; and carefully abstain—that is, as much
as thou canst,—from peacocks, cranes, coots, didappers and water-hens.
“As for thy drink—I need not tell thee, it must be the infusion of
Vervain and the herb Hanea, of which Aelian relates such effects; but
if thy stomach palls with it—discontinue it from time to time, taking
cucumbers, melons, purslane, water-lilies, woodbine, and lettuce, in
the stead of them.
“There is nothing further for thee, which occurs to me at present—
“Unless the breaking out of a fresh war.—So wishing everything, dear
Toby, for the best,
“I rest thy affectionate brother,
“WALTER SHANDY.”
Under the present circumstances Sterne himself would doubtless have
omitted from his letter the passage about the ass; and, far from
advising the predestined to be bled he would have changed the regimen
of cucumbers and lettuces for one eminently substantial. He recommended
the exercise of economy, in order to attain to the power of magic
liberality in the moment of war, thus imitating the admirable example
of the English government, which in time of peace has two hundred ships
in commission, but whose shipwrights can, in time of need, furnish
double that quantity when it is desirable to scour the sea and carry
off a whole foreign navy.
When a man belongs to the small class of those who by a liberal
education have been made masters of the domain of thought, he ought
always, before marrying, to examine his physical and moral resources.
To contend advantageously with the tempest which so many attractions
tend to raise in the heart of his wife, a husband ought to possess,
besides the science of pleasure and a fortune which saves him from
sinking into any class of the predestined, robust health, exquisite
tact, considerable intellect, too much good sense to make his
superiority felt, excepting on fit occasions, and finally great
acuteness of hearing and sight.
If he has a handsome face, a good figure, a manly air, and yet falls
short of all these promises, he will sink into the class of the
predestined. On the other hand, a husband who is plain in features but
has a face full of expression, will find himself, if his wife once
forgets his plainness, in a situation most favorable for his struggle
against the genius of evil.
He will study (and this is a detail omitted from the letter of Sterne)
to give no occasion for his wife’s disgust. Also, he will resort
moderately to the use of perfumes, which, however, always expose beauty
to injurious suspicions.
He ought as carefully to study how to behave and how to pick out
subjects of conversation, as if he were courting the most inconstant of
women. It is for him that a philosopher has made the following
reflection:
“More than one woman has been rendered unhappy for the rest of her
life, has been lost and dishonored by a man whom she has ceased to
love, because he took off his coat awkwardly, trimmed one of his nails
crookedly, put on a stocking wrong side out, and was clumsy with a
button.”
One of the most important of his duties will be to conceal from his
wife the real state of his fortune, so that he may satisfy her fancies
and caprices as generous celibates are wont to do.
Then the most difficult thing of all, a thing to accomplish which
superhuman courage is required, is to exercise the most complete
control over the ass of which Sterne speaks. This ass ought to be as
submissive as a serf of the thirteenth century was to his lord; to obey
and be silent, advance and stop, at the slightest word.
Even when equipped with these advantages, a husband enters the lists
with scarcely any hope of success. Like all the rest, he still runs the
risk of becoming, for his wife, a sort of responsible editor.
“And why!” will exclaim certain good but small-minded people, whose
horizon is limited to the tip of their nose, “why is it necessary to
take so much pains in order to love, and why is it necessary to go to
school beforehand, in order to be happy in your own home? Does the
government intend to institute a professional chair of love, just as it
has instituted a chair of law?”
This is our answer:
These multiplied rules, so difficult to deduce, these minute
observations, these ideas which vary so as to suit different
temperaments, are innate, so to speak, in the heart of those who are
born for love; just as his feeling of taste and his indescribable
felicity in combining ideas are natural to the soul of the poet, the
painter or the musician. The men who would experience any fatigue in
putting into practice the instructions given in this Meditation are
naturally predestined, just as he who cannot perceive the connection
which exists between two different ideas is an imbecile. As a matter of
fact, love has its great men although they be unrecognized, as war has
its Napoleons, poetry its Andre Cheniers and philosophy its Descartes.
This last observation contains the germ of a true answer to the
question which men from time immemorial have been asking: Why are happy
marriages so very rare?
This phenomenon of the moral world is rarely met with for the reason
that people of genius are rarely met with. A passion which lasts is a
sublime drama acted by two performers of equal talent, a drama in which
sentiments form the catastrophe, where desires are incidents and the
lightest thought brings a change of scene. Now how is it possible, in
this herd of bimana which we call a nation, to meet, on any but rare
occasions, a man and a woman who possess in the same degree the genius
of love, when men of talent are so thinly sown and so rare in all other
sciences, in the pursuit of which the artist needs only to understand
himself, in order to attain success?
Up to the present moment, we have been confronted with making a
forecast of the difficulties, to some degree physical, which two
married people have to overcome, in order to be happy; but what a task
would be ours if it were necessary to unfold the startling array of
moral obligations which spring from their differences in character? Let
us cry halt! The man who is skillful enough to guide the temperament
will certainly show himself master of the soul of another.
We will suppose that our model husband fulfills the primary conditions
necessary, in order that he may dispute or maintain possession of his
wife, in spite of all assailants. We will admit that he is not to be
reckoned in any of the numerous classes of the predestined which we
have passed in review. Let us admit that he has become imbued with the
spirit of all our maxims; that he has mastered the admirable science,
some of whose precepts we have made known; that he has married wisely,
that he knows his wife, that he is loved by her; and let us continue
the enumeration of all those general causes which might aggravate the
critical situation which we shall represent him as occupying for the
instruction of the human race.