We were all at dinner one day, and Father Payne came in, in an excited
mood, with a letter in his hand. "Here's a bit of nonsense," he said.
"Here's my old friend Davenport giving me what he calls a piece of his
mind--he can't have much left--about my 'celibate brotherhood,' as he calls
it. It's all the other way! I am rather relieved when I hear that any of
you people are happily engaged to be married. Celibacy is the danger of my
experiment, not the object of it."
"Do you wish us to be married?" said Kaye. "That's new to me. I thought
this was a little fortress against the eternal feminine."
"What rubbish!" said Father Payne. "The worst of using ridiculous words
like feminine is that it blinds people to the truth. Masculine and feminine
have nothing to do with sex. In the first place, intellectual people are
all rather apt to be sexless; in the next place, all sensible people, men
and women alike, are what is meant by masculine--that is to say, spirited,
generous, tolerant, good-natured, frank. Thirdly, all suspicious, scheming,
sensitive, theatrical, irritable, vain people are what is meant by
feminine. And artistic natures are all prone to those failings, because
they desire dignity and influence--they want to be felt. The real
difference between people is whether they want to live, or whether they
want to be known to exist. The worst of feminine people is that they are
probably the people who ought not to marry, unless they marry a masculine
person; and they are not, as a rule, attracted by masculinity."
"But one can't get married in cold blood," said Vincent. "I often wish that
marriages could just be arranged, as they do it in France. I think I should
be a very good husband, but I shall never have the courage or the time to
go in search of a wife."
"That's why I send you all out into the world," said Father Payne. "Most
people ought to be married. It's a normal thing--it isn't a transcendental
thing. In my experience most marriages are successful. It does everyone
good to be obliged to live at close quarters with other people, and to be
unable to get away from them."
"I didn't know you were interested in such matters," said someone.
"I have gone into it pretty considerably, sir," said Father Payne, "The one
thing that does interest me is human admixtures. It does no one any good to
get too much attached to his own point of view."
"But surely," said Rose, "there are some marriages which are obviously bad
for all concerned--real incompatibilities? People who can't understand each
other or their children--children who can't understand their parents? It
always seems to me rather horrible that people should be shut up together
like rats in a cage."
"I expect we shall have legislation before long," said Father Payne, "for
breaking up homes where some definite evil like drunkenness is at work--but
I don't want industrial schools for children; that is even more inhuman
than a bad home. We want more boarding out, but that's expensive. Someone
has to pay, if children are to be planted out, and to pay well. There's no
motive of duty so strong for an Englishman as good wages. People are honest
about giving fair money's worth. But it is no good talking about these
things, because they are all so far ahead of us. The question is whether
anyone can suggest any practical means of filing away any of the
roughnesses of marriage. I do not believe that the problem is very serious
among workers. It is the marriage of idle people that is apt to be
disastrous."
"The thing that damages many marriages," said Rose, "is the fact that
people have got to see so much of each other. What people really want is a
holiday from each other."
"Yes, but that is impossible financially," said Father Payne. "Apart from
love and children, marriage is a small joint-stock company for cheap
comfort. But it is of no use to go vapouring on about these big schemes,
because in a democracy people won't do what philosophers wish, but what
they want. Let's take a notorious case, known to everyone. Can anyone say
what practical advice he could have given to either Carlyle or to Mrs.
Carlyle, which would have improved that witches' cauldron? There were two
high-principled Puritanical people, which is the same thing as saying that
they both were disposed to consider that anyone who disagreed with them did
so for a bad motive, and exalted their own whims and prejudices into moral
principles; both of them irritable and sensitive, both able to give
instantaneous and elaborate expression to their vaguest thoughts,--Carlyle
himself with eloquence which he wielded like a bludgeon, and Mrs. Carlyle
with incisiveness which she used like a sharp knife--Carlyle with too much
to do, and Mrs. Carlyle with less than nothing to do--each passionately
attached to the other as soon as they were separated, and both capable of
saying the sweetest and most affectionate things by letter, which they
could not for the life of them utter in talk. They did, as a matter of
fact, spend an immense amount of time apart; and when they were together,
Carlyle, having been trained as a peasant and one of a large family,
roughly neglected Mrs. Carlyle, while Mrs. Carlyle, with a middle-class
training, and moreover indulged as an only daughter, was too proud to
complain, but not proud enough not to resent the neglect deeply. What could
have been done for them? Were they impossible people to live with? Was it
true, as Tennyson bluntly said, that it was as well that they married,
because two people were unhappy instead of four?"
"They wanted a child as a go-between!" said Barthrop.
"Of course they did!" said Father Payne. "That would have pulled the whole
ménage together. And don't tell me that it was a wise dispensation that
they were childless! Cleansing fires? The fires in which they lived, with
Carlyle raging about porridge and milk and crowing cocks, working alone,
walking alone, flying off to see Lady Ashburton, sleeping alone; and Mrs.
Carlyle, whom everyone else admired and adored, eating her heart out
because she could not get him to value her company;--there was not much
that was cleansing about all that! The cleansing came when she was dead,
and when he saw what he had done."
"I expect they have made it up by now," said Kaye.
"You're quite right!" said Father Payne. "It matters less with those great
vivid people. They can afford to remember. But the little people, who
simply end further back than they began, what is to be done for them?"