I TALKED to a woman once on the subject of honeymoons. I said, “Would
you recommend a long honeymoon, or a Saturday to Monday somewhere?” A
silence fell upon her. I gathered she was looking back rather than
forward to her answer.
“I would advise a long honeymoon,” she replied at length, “the
old-fashioned month.”
“Why,” I persisted, “I thought the tendency of the age was to cut these
things shorter and shorter.”
“It is the tendency of the age,” she answered, “to seek escape from many
things it would be wiser to face. I think myself that, for good or evil,
the sooner it is over—the sooner both the man and the woman know—the
better.”
“The sooner what is over?” I asked.
If she had a fault, this woman, about which I am not sure, it was an
inclination towards enigma.
She crossed to the window and stood there, looking out.
“Was there not a custom,” she said, still gazing down into the wet,
glistening street, “among one of the ancient peoples, I forget which,
ordaining that when a man and woman, loving one another, or thinking that
they loved, had been joined together, they should go down upon their
wedding night to the temple? And into the dark recesses of the temple,
through many winding passages, the priest led them until they came to the
great chamber where dwelt the voice of their god. There the priest left
them, clanging-to the massive door behind him, and there, alone in
silence, they made their sacrifice; and in the night the Voice spoke to
them, showing them their future life—whether they had chosen well;
whether their love would live or die. And in the morning the priest
returned and led them back into the day; and they dwelt among their
fellows. But no one was permitted to question them, nor they to answer
should any do so. Well, do you know, our nineteenth-century honeymoon at
Brighton, Switzerland, or Ramsgate, as the choice or necessity may be,
always seems to me merely another form of that night spent alone in the
temple before the altar of that forgotten god. Our young men and women
marry, and we kiss them and congratulate them; and, standing on the
doorstep, throw rice and old slippers, and shout good wishes after them;
and he waves his gloved hand to us, and she flutters her little
handkerchief from the carriage window; and we watch their smiling faces
and hear their laughter until the corner hides them from our view. Then
we go about our own business, and a short time passes by; and one day we
meet them again, and their faces have grown older and graver; and I
always wonder what the Voice has told them during that little while that
they have been absent from our sight. But of course it would not do to
ask them. Nor would they answer truly if we did.”
My friend laughed, and, leaving the window, took her place beside the
tea-things, and other callers dropping in, we fell to talk of pictures,
plays, and people.
But I felt it would be unwise to act on her sole advice, much as I have
always valued her opinion.
A woman takes life too seriously. It is a serious affair to most of us,
the Lord knows. That is why it is well not to take it more seriously
than need be.
Little Jack and little Jill fall down the hill, hurting their little
knees, and their little noses, spilling the hard-earned water. We are
very philosophical.
“Oh, don’t cry!” we tell them, “that is babyish. Little boys and little
girls must learn to bear pain. Up you get, fill the pail again, and try
once more.”
Little Jack and little Jill rub their dirty knuckles into their little
eyes, looking ruefully at their bloody little knees, and trot back with
the pail. We laugh at them, but not ill-naturedly.
“Poor little souls,” we say; “how they did hullabaloo. One might have
thought they were half-killed. And it was only a broken crown, after
all. What a fuss children make!” We bear with much stoicism the fall of
little Jack and little Jill.
But when _we_—grown-up Jack with moustache turning grey; grown-up Jill
with the first faint “crow’s feet” showing—when _we_ tumble down the
hill, and _our_ pail is spilt. Ye Heavens! what a tragedy has happened.
Put out the stars, turn off the sun, suspend the laws of nature. Mr.
Jack and Mrs. Jill, coming down the hill—what they were doing on the hill
we will not inquire—have slipped over a stone, placed there surely by the
evil powers of the universe. Mr. Jack and Mrs. Jill have bumped their
silly heads. Mr. Jack and Mrs. Jill have hurt their little hearts, and
stand marvelling that the world can go about its business in the face of
such disaster.
Don’t take the matter quite so seriously, Jack and Jill. You have
spilled your happiness, you must toil up the hill again and refill the
pail. Carry it more carefully next time. What were you doing? Playing
some fool’s trick, I’ll be bound.
A laugh and a sigh, a kiss and good-bye, is our life. Is it worth so
much fretting? It is a merry life on the whole. Courage, comrade. A
campaign cannot be all drum and fife and stirrup-cup. The marching and
the fighting must come into it somewhere. There are pleasant bivouacs
among the vineyards, merry nights around the camp fires. White hands
wave a welcome to us; bright eyes dim at our going. Would you run from
the battle-music? What have you to complain of? Forward: the medal to
some, the surgeon’s knife to others; to all of us, sooner or later, six
feet of mother earth. What are you afraid of? Courage, comrade.
There is a mean between basking through life with the smiling contentment
of the alligator, and shivering through it with the aggressive
sensibility of the Lama determined to die at every cross word. To bear
it as a man we must also feel it as a man. My philosophic friend, seek
not to comfort a brother standing by the coffin of his child with the
cheery suggestion that it will be all the same a hundred years hence,
because, for one thing, the observation is not true: the man is changed
for all eternity—possibly for the better, but don’t add that. A soldier
with a bullet in his neck is never quite the man he was. But he can
laugh and he can talk, drink his wine and ride his horse. Now and again,
towards evening, when the weather is trying, the sickness will come upon
him. You will find him on a couch in a dark corner.
“Hallo! old fellow, anything up?”
“Oh, just a twinge, the old wound, you know. I will be better in a
little while.”
Shut the door of the dark room quietly. I should not stay even to
sympathize with him if I were you. The men will be coming to screw the
coffin down soon. I think he would like to be alone with it till then.
Let us leave him. He will come back to the club later on in the season.
For a while we may have to give him another ten points or so, but he will
soon get back his old form. Now and again, when he meets the other
fellows’ boys shouting on the towing-path; when Brown rushes up the
drive, paper in hand, to tell him how that young scapegrace Jim has won
his Cross; when he is congratulating Jones’s eldest on having passed with
honours, the old wound may give him a nasty twinge. But the pain will
pass away. He will laugh at our stories and tell us his own; eat his
dinner, play his rubber. It is only a wound.
Tommy can never be ours, Jenny does not love us. We cannot afford
claret, so we will have to drink beer. Well, what would you have us do?
Yes, let us curse Fate by all means—some one to curse is always useful.
Let us cry and wring our hands—for how long? The dinner-bell will ring
soon, and the Smiths are coming. We shall have to talk about the opera
and the picture-galleries. Quick, where is the eau-de-Cologne? where are
the curling-tongs? Or would you we committed suicide? Is it worth
while? Only a few more years—perhaps to-morrow, by aid of a piece of
orange peel or a broken chimney-pot—and Fate will save us all that
trouble.
Or shall we, as sulky children, mope day after day? We are a
broken-hearted little Jack—little Jill. We will never smile again; we
will pine away and die, and be buried in the spring. The world is sad,
and life so cruel, and heaven so cold. Oh dear! oh dear! we have hurt
ourselves.
We whimper and whine at every pain. In old strong days men faced real
dangers, real troubles every hour; they had no time to cry. Death and
disaster stood ever at the door. Men were contemptuous of them. Now in
each snug protected villa we set to work to make wounds out of scratches.
Every head-ache becomes an agony, every heart-ache a tragedy. It took a
murdered father, a drowned sweetheart, a dishonoured mother, a ghost, and
a slaughtered Prime Minister to produce the emotions in Hamlet that a
modern minor poet obtains from a chorus girl’s frown, or a temporary
slump on the Stock Exchange. Like Mrs. Gummidge, we feel it more. The
lighter and easier life gets the more seriously we go out to meet it.
The boatmen of Ulysses faced the thunder and the sunshine alike with
frolic welcome. We modern sailors have grown more sensitive. The
sunshine scorches us, the rain chills us. We meet both with loud
self-pity.
Thinking these thoughts, I sought a second friend—a man whose breezy
common-sense has often helped me, and him likewise I questioned on this
subject of honeymoons.
“My dear boy,” he replied; “take my advice, if ever you get married,
arrange it so that the honeymoon shall only last a week, and let it be a
bustling week into the bargain. Take a Cook’s circular tour. Get
married on the Saturday morning, cut the breakfast and all that
foolishness, and catch the eleven-ten from Charing Cross to Paris. Take
her up the Eiffel Tower on Sunday. Lunch at Fontainebleau. Dine at the
Maison Doree, and show her the Moulin Rouge in the evening. Take the
night train for Lucerne. Devote Monday and Tuesday to doing Switzerland,
and get into Rome by Thursday morning, taking the Italian lakes _en
route_. On Friday cross to Marseilles, and from there push along to
Monte Carlo. Let her have a flutter at the tables. Start early Saturday
morning for Spain, cross the Pyrenees on mules, and rest at Bordeaux on
Sunday. Get back to Paris on Monday (Monday is always a good day for the
opera), and on Tuesday evening you will be at home, and glad to get
there. Don’t give her time to criticize you until she has got used to
you. No man will bear unprotected exposure to a young girl’s eyes. The
honeymoon is the matrimonial microscope. Wobble it. Confuse it with
many objects. Cloud it with other interests. Don’t sit still to be
examined. Besides, remember that a man always appears at his best when
active, and a woman at her worst. Bustle her, my dear boy, bustle her: I
don’t care who she may be. Give her plenty of luggage to look after;
make her catch trains. Let her see the average husband sprawling
comfortably over the railway cushions, while his wife has to sit bolt
upright in the corner left to her. Let her hear how other men swear.
Let her smell other men’s tobacco. Hurry up, and get her accustomed
quickly to the sight of mankind. Then she will be less surprised and
shocked as she grows to know you. One of the best fellows I ever knew
spoilt his married life beyond repair by a long quiet honeymoon. They
went off for a month to a lonely cottage in some heaven-forsaken spot,
where never a soul came near them, and never a thing happened but
morning, afternoon, and night. There for thirty days she overhauled him.
When he yawned—and he yawned pretty often, I guess, during that month—she
thought of the size of his mouth, and when he put his heels upon the
fender she sat and brooded upon the shape of his feet. At meal-time, not
feeling hungry herself, having nothing to do to make her hungry, she
would occupy herself with watching him eat; and at night, not feeling
sleepy for the same reason, she would lie awake and listen to his
snoring. After the first day or two he grew tired of talking nonsense,
and she of listening to it (it sounded nonsense now they could speak it
aloud; they had fancied it poetry when they had had to whisper it); and
having no other subject, as yet, of common interest, they would sit and
stare in front of them in silence. One day some trifle irritated him and
he swore. On a busy railway platform, or in a crowded hotel, she would
have said, ‘Oh!’ and they would both have laughed. From that echoing
desert the silly words rose up in widening circles towards the sky, and
that night she cried herself to sleep. Bustle them, my dear boy, bustle
them. We all like each other better the less we think about one another,
and the honeymoon is an exceptionally critical time. Bustle her, my dear
boy, bustle her.”
My very worst honeymoon experience took place in the South of England in
eighteen hundred and—well, never mind the exact date, let us say a few
years ago. I was a shy young man at that time. Many complain of my
reserve to this day, but then some girls expect too much from a man. We
all have our shortcomings. Even then, however, I was not so shy as she.
We had to travel from Lyndhurst in the New Forest to Ventnor, an awkward
bit of cross-country work in those days.
“It’s so fortunate you are going too,” said her aunt to me on the
Tuesday; “Minnie is always nervous travelling alone. You will be able to
look after her, and I shan’t be anxious.”
I said it would be a pleasure, and at the time I honestly thought it. On
the Wednesday I went down to the coach office, and booked two places for
Lymington, from where we took the steamer. I had not a suspicion of
trouble.