not proffer this advice; to whom I would rather say: Save yourselves
while you can--women without children and without obligations except
the marriage vows, which have been flung back upon them, shattered and
soiled by him who had sworn to hold them sacred and inviolate “so long
as ye both shall live,” When this day comes to any wife, the day when
she finds her home ruined, her womanhood insulted, her self-respect
outraged; when she finds that her petitions, her tears, her arguments
and her warnings alike are scoffed and disregarded; when she sees that
she can do nothing to elevate the man who persistently degrades himself
and drags her down with him; when she fears that blows may be added to
cursing and coarseness, then my advice to that woman is, appeal to the
law for a release from a union which has become a slavery; annul the
contract broken and despised by the other contracting party; be free.
Every legal covenant is made dependent upon the mutual honesty and good
faith of the covenanters, and if one fails to fulfill his stipulated
obligation the other is released, often with a compensation for his
disappointment.
Is not marriage a contract worthy of as much protection as the
copartnership agreement of a firm of grocers or brokers?
Let us do nothing either rashly or with too much prejudice or
conservatism. Let us, if we would achieve success, seek “the happy
middling” between these two extremes.
While harmless as doves do not let us forget to be also wise as
serpents.
XXXI.
ABOUT ENGAGEMENTS.
There is no law in the social code at once so stringent and so variable
as that relating to the manner of conducting an engagement of marriage.
It is a good ideal like the children’s game,
“Simon says this!
Simon says thus!”
And whether it is this or thus, the players must do exactly as Simon
orders.
Sometimes, for instance, Mrs. Grundy has demanded that betrothals
should be of the most private, almost surreptitious character; that
there should be “an understanding” between the young people, and a few,
a very few, of the bride’s family should be let into the secret, but
that the world at large should be astonished, and taken altogether
by surprise in hearing some fine morning that Colin and Phyllis were
married “very quietly” at the bride’s home a few days since.
Then Mrs. Grundy takes a French fit, and the marriage is to be arranged
between the two families, and announced by a betrothal party given
by the bride’s mother. Just now, I believe, it is the thing for the
girl herself to give a tea to her girl friends, and receive their
congratulations and some little gifts--heralds, as it were, of the more
costly wedding gifts to come--all by herself. In fact, so strict is
the idea of “ladies only” on these occasions that everybody was very
much scandalized by the presence of the Colin of one of these latter
engagement parties.
“So very awkward! So indelicate!” exclaimed one of the guests in my
presence, and I could not but suggest that perhaps the _fiancée_ felt
that seeing is believing, and wished to prove that her pretensions were
not without foundation.
This parading the engagement and the engaged is perhaps one extreme,
but certainly a former friend of mine went to the other when she one
day invited her own mother into her bedroom and, exhibiting a white
silk dress lying upon the couch, remarked: “That’s my wedding dress,
mother, and I shall be married to-morrow evening, here at home.”
I always thought if I had been that mother I would have replied as
coolly: “Oh, indeed! I’m sorry, but I am going away for two or three
days, and shall start in an hour.”
Another New York girl whom I knew walked out of the house one morning,
went to the Little Church we all know of, was married, bought a paper
of chocolate creams and went home, while her husband took a train West.
Some months later he returned to the city, called upon his wife, and
the two together announced the marriage to the somewhat astonished
parents of the bride, the daughter remarking that she “didn’t want the
fuss of an engagement.”
But it seems to me that these secretive people lose one of the very
prettiest and most ideal epochs of life, the season of open and
privileged betrothal. One feels it in reading history and seeing
the pretty pageant of the _fiançailles_ of some fair young princess
who returns for a while to her father’s house a maiden, yet bearing
somewhat of the sweet dignity of matronhood and the honors of her
future state.
In the English marriage service, as used in the mother country, there
is provision made for a betrothal service, to be followed weeks,
months, or, as is now the use, moments after, by the real marriage
ceremony, and at one wedding whereat I assisted in London the man and
maid stopped at the entrance of the choir and there “gave their troth”
before proceeding to the altar steps, where they were married.
It seems to me that if some pretty daughter of Murray Hill were to set
the fashion of going to church and being betrothed, and then having a
reception in her father’s house, it would be received as a quaint and
original idea, and set a charming fashion.
All pretty ideas, however, may be expanded like bubbles until they
burst, and this has been. There was a period when betrothals,
especially in Scotland, were looked upon in nearly the same light as
marriages and great immoralities sprung from them. One of Sir Walter
Scott’s novels, “The Monastery,” I believe, turns upon this idea, the
betrothed pair calling themselves “handfast” and openly living together.
The same abuse of betrothal is brought forward in Wilkie Collins’s
novel of “The Cloister and the Hearth,” one of the best stories he
ever wrote. In fact, the marriage records became so obscure and so
vague in consequence of this abuse of betrothal, that the Scottish law
was obliged, in defense of the rights of property, to ordain that any
couple calling themselves man and wife, or even living together in
those relations, were actually to be held as such, although no marriage
ceremony had been imposed upon them.
The privileges and rights of betrothed lovers have been, and perhaps
are, as vague as the importance of betrothal. We shall all agree that
Scott’s hero, and others like him, pushed both rights and privileges to
an undue extent, but on the other hand, I heard one lady boast that her
husband had no more than kissed her hand before she was married to him,
and a man of my acquaintance, bemoaning his unhappy marriage, said that
he knew nothing at all of his wife’s character until it was too late,
for they had only been alone twice before their wedding day, and at
home she was effaced by her clever and managing mamma.
But very few, either of men or maids, would be content with such a cool
and formal engagement as these, and however they begin, they generally
manage as time goes on to secure some private interviews, and I dare
say to indulge in some caresses a little warmer than the kissing of
hands.
It is the nature of man to pursue, and it ought to be the nature of
woman to fly, and to keep on flying as long as the pursuit continues;
and let me tell you in your ear, my dears, that it is the very best
way to keep up his interest in the pursuit; but still a loving and
confiding young girl does not always copy too closely the manners of
Diana, who had Actæon hounded to death for peeping at her in the bath,
nor of Atalanta, who expended all the golden apples in diverting her
_prétendu_ from the chase; they are not generally mortally offended if
the engaged lover claims a kiss or two, and I have heard of dear little
creatures who not only accepted but returned these sweet trifles, and
were after all none the worse off for it.
Yes, lovers will demonstrate their love, I suppose, and for my part
I agree with the old essayist who says: “All men love a lover,” and
always feel very indulgent toward any of their sweet follies which come
under my notice. Still I do want to say one little word to the dear
girls whom I love and admire so heartily, and it is this:
Keep your place. The time of betrothal is the time of your greatest
power and authority, at any rate, unless as a wife you earn for
yourself a place that many wives never attain. But now, now while you
are promised to this man, and not yet in his power, while he still
clothes you with the shining robe of an ideal, and familiarity has not
as yet betrayed the fact that you are after all only an ordinary woman,
now, when he may not be with you at all times, and spends much of his
absence in reviewing the last interview, now is the time, if you are
wise and hold yourself steadily in band, keeping your own place and
keeping him in his, that you may establish yourself in a position with
regard to this man which you need never lose.
Don’t be cold, or unsympathetic, or prudish and old maidish, for no
real man can endure that and keep his love; but never come down from
your throne to sit at his feet; never lay aside your royal robes of
maidenly reserve and sensitive purity; never fail to respect yourself
and you will never lose his respect, and there is absolutely no
foundation for enduring love but respect; believe me, for it is true.
Men talk of liking women whose hearts outrun their heads, who have no
will of their own, who are like wax in their hands, etc., etc., but
although they may eagerly seek these pretty dolls for an hour, they
soon weary of them, and if they ever marry, the wedding day is the end
instead of the beginning of the love story. Be wise, my little girl, be
wise! Recognize your own strength and your own power and make the most
of it; hold yourself back and your lover will pursue; remain queen of
your own position, and he will make you queen of his; come down from
your own place and lay yourself at his feet, and he will rest his foot
upon you, and believe it is the natural and right thing to do.
I have a theory of my own, that if a man breaks off his marriage
engagement it is almost always the girl’s fault. She has been either
too hard or too soft with him, either chilled him into the conviction
that she is heartless and devoid of tenderness, or she has valued
herself so lightly that he has learned to hold very cheaply what is so
lavishly bestowed.
And yet I condemn very seriously the man who for less than the gravest
causes will break off his engagement to the girl he has seriously
invited to become his wife. Nothing is more damaging to a girl in a
social point of view than to have been jilted, and although she may not
be at all to blame in the matter, or at most have only shown errors
of judgment and self-management, a sort of stigma attaches to her in
almost every circle of society, and another man is less likely to
seek her in marriage. The man is not injured, nor are his chances of
subsequent marriage affected at all, whether it is he or she who breaks
off the engagement, and for that reason it always seems to me that if
an engagement must be broken the man should have the chivalry to take
the odium of being discarded upon his own shoulders, and declare the
young lady to have been the discarder.
I am always so sorry when I see in the papers that some girl, or
perhaps some widow, issuing a man for breach of promise of marriage,
for I always imagine it to be the suicidal expression of angry pride
and wounded love, self-love as well as other love, and that the poor,
hot-tempered, desperate creature has only seized upon the weapon
nearest at hand wherewith to strike at the man she still loves, and is
so bitterly ashamed of herself for loving.
One class of women takes to horsewhips, and one to pistols, and one to
the law, and one to resolute defamation, and I am sorry for them all,
for I am sure they never would so disgrace themselves except in the
extremity of great suffering, for I know that in the very nature of
things their revenge, however successful, will entail more suffering
in the end. And I am sorry, too, for the more dignified, and patient
victims who say not a word and do not a thing, but draw the robe close
over the bleeding wound and dance, and sing, and smile in calm defiance
of their own breaking hearts and wounded womanhood.
Yes, I pity these, but I hardly know whether I pitied a lady, now dead,
whom I used to know. She was engaged to a man whom she not only loved,
but respected and admired, and who seemed, as all the world said,
the one man in the world whom she should marry. A noble position was
offered to him and he went to Spain to make arrangements for accepting
it, and to prepare a home for his bride. One of the sudden fevers of
the country seized upon his unacclimated system, and in three days he
was dead.
His bride-to-be made little open lament, but in the same day she heard
the news set off to visit a sister in a distant city. When she came
home she was dressed in widow’s weeds, and always wore them until the
day of her death, some twenty years later. She was always cheerful,
always silent, always gently reserved, tender and loving to those who
remained, but never pretending to any other place than that she had
assumed--a widow in heart, if not in name.
It was, perhaps, the happiest life she could have chosen.
XXXII.
WEDLOCK IN DANGER.
“Why don’t you marry and have a house of your own to oversee and
children to bring up and a husband to take care of? I’ll warrant
there’d soon be an end of all these fads about ‘higher education’ and
woman’s mission and the ‘emancipation of the enslaved sex,’ and all the
rest of the rubbish I hear you talk.”
Thus in my hearing not long since did a certain grandmamma, whom I
extremely admire and love, address her namesake, a bright girl of
twenty summers, who at once replied frankly and succinctly:
“We don’t marry nowadays, grandmamma, because the men don’t ask us to.
It’s out of fashion.”
“Out of fashion! Nonsense. The world isn’t going to stop growing, is
it? If the men don’t ask you, why, you must ask them, that’s all.”
“It wasn’t so in your day, was it, grandmamma?” pursued the girl
mischievously; and the dear old lady bridled a little and set off upon
a train of reminiscences more exciting than a fairy story.
Nor was she a solitary instance in my experience. Ask almost any
woman of seventy years and over as to the opportunities of matrimony
that were offered to her before twenty-five, and if she has been a
pretty girl she will tell you much the same story, and veraciously,
too, for I have heard old gentlemen tell the same stories from their
own side. If a girl was young and comely and gay and bright, it was
a foregone conclusion three quarters of a century ago that she would
have what they called “beaux” in abundance, and would marry whenever
she was tired of her position as queen of hearts. If they did not
care to abdicate too early, they favored now one and now another of
their courtiers, played off one swain against another, broke hearts
and caused Wertherlike tragedies, for in those days people read “The
Sorrows of Werther” with tearful sympathy instead of with peals of
laughter, as do we modern cynics.
If you don’t believe all this, go and ask your own grandmamma if she
ever had an admirer except grandpapa, and if she is one of the right
sort of old ladies--an old lady with soft blue eyes and a pretty smile
and fine white skin, all covered with a lace pattern of tiny wrinkles,
and silvery, wavy hair--if she is that sort of a grandmamma, you will
spend at least one delightful twilight hour in hearing of the old
times, the good old times when girls were queens of love and beauty and
men were their humble adorers, and only withheld their proposals from a
very becoming sense of their unworthiness.
To be sure, if you are a girl, these stories may have the effect that
novels did upon Gloriana, who, instead of lining amused at the tales of
romance she read, only wept into her checked apron because “there were
so many good times and she not in them.”
But if you are a young man you will feel the same sort of
self-congratulation you do in reading the “Lives of the Martyrs.” You
would not have liked to throw incense upon a heathen altar and trample
the cross under your feet, but you don’t feel at all sure that you
would have withstood the temptation to escape the rack and the boiling
oil.
Certainly the times have changed, and men change with them, for us as
well as for Ulysses, and I say “men” advisedly, for I don’t think women
have changed as much. Most girls--that is, the dear, rosy, dimpling
darlings, who are papa’s pet and mamma’s blessing, and who do not
insist upon becoming civil engineers or doctors of law, medicine or
theology--these girls, pure and simple, are willing enough to marry if
some one whom they love asks them to do so. But the men do not propose,
and the good old methods are out of vogue, and the times are out of
joint.
Young men have extended their privileges and contracted their
liabilities. Formerly if an unmarried man paid particular attention
to a girl or a young widow, it was understood by all observers that he
was a candidate for her hand if he could gain her reluctant consent to
accept him. The girl’s parents looked serenely on, conscious that their
daughter was mistress of the situation, and needed neither assistance
nor protection--conscious, too, that the young man would be a very
fortunate fellow if he gained so desirable a wife--and they would not
stand in his way, although they were sincerely sorry to lose the flower
of their family.
After awhile the girl shyly told her mother that Reuben and she were
going to be married about Thanksgiving time, and although there was
not often any open announcement of the engagement, and certainly no
receptions or presents to mark the occasion, the bride’s family began
preparations for the wedding and the setting up of the young couple at
housekeeping. It was all so simple and honest and natural that to hear
of those times is like reading of the golden age or the lost Atlanta,
or any other of those dreams of some bygone perfection, or some coming
millennium.
Occasionally in those days the young man behaved in a manner which is
now the rule, but then was the exception, and proved himself a trifler
and a male flirt, amusing himself for the hour, but with no serious
intentions. But he was not then, as he now is, suffered to get off
scot free from this sort of pleasantry. If, after a due period of
courtship, the youth made no offer of matrimony, but showed symptoms
of transferring his attentions to some other shrine, the father or
brother of the slighted fair one called him to account, demanding an
explanation of his conduct, and giving him to understand that if he had
no serious intentions, they had, and that, having danced to pleased
himself, he was now to pay the piper to please them.
Generally a little conversation of this sort was effectual, and the
tardy swain insisted that he had only been waiting for encouragement to
declare himself, but if the trifler really tried to cry off and escape
without penalty, the brother or father significantly handled a heavy
riding whip or cane or glanced at the stout boots he might chance to be
wearing. Sometimes indeed a marriage has been solemnized at the muzzle
of a loaded pistol, with an angry father at its other end, and I have
heard of an old-time marriage where the bridegroom, being asked, “Do
you take this woman for your wedded wife?” replied, “Not if I can help
it,” and the bride’s brother deliberately cocked and aimed his pistol,
demanding, “What was your reply, sirrah?” “Yes, I do,” returned the
other, grinding his teeth, and the marriage proceeded. One does not
envy that unfortunate bride, however, and in point of fact she died
before the year was over of a broken heart. However, the family honor
was saved, and in those old days they placed a good deal of value upon
family honor. So old-fashioned!
But these extremities of persuasion were very rare. Generally speaking,
the young man asked for no greater privilege than an early wedding, and
the father had only to open his pocketbook, and the brother to make
himself agreeable, and the mother to buy and cut whole bolts of linen
and cambric and cotton into the _trousseau_ which the pretty bride
helped to make up with her own fingers.
And now all this is changed. Instead of placidly looking on to see her
daughter hold a little court and select the one she means to favor
from a crowd of eager aspirants, the mother must be, like the early
bird, very early on the ground to capture the biggest and richest worm
before any other mother bird can grab him and carry him to drop into
her nestling’s open mouth. No wonder she gets an anxious and eager
look herself and worries and frets and twitters and chirps overmuch
and keeps the home nest in a condition of turmoil, for the worm has
grown very wary, and if in taking his early walks abroad he espies the
flitting form of the mother bird or even hears her sweet if sharpened
song of greeting, he is apt to precipitately retire to his burrow or
hide beneath some stem or clump of weeds.
Worse than this, should the bachelor chance to be, instead of a mere
worm of earth, a beautiful gold or silver fish disporting himself in
the waters of matrimony, then mamma, instead of a bird, is seen as a
fisher, a veritable fisher of men, baiting her hook with her daughter’s
charms, her accomplishments, her virtues, and her affectionate and
submissive temperament; but, alas, the gold-fish has grown as “gamy”
as a brook trout, and worse, for he can often keep a most experienced
angler “in play” for a whole season, and at the end give a sprightly
and humorous twist to his glittering tail and fly off at a tangent, to
be no more seen in those waters.
Now, why are these things thusly? “Why don’t the men propose, mamma?”
as runs the cynically comic song.
Surely girls are as sweet and as pretty and as affectionate and as gay
as they were a century or so ago, and as grandmamma sensibly remarks,
“The world must go on,” and if the young men, born and brought up
in our own land will not assist in propelling the national chariot
they must not object later on, when, as Mrs. Gamp has it, “most wotes
carried the day,” and the descendants of the Knickerbockers and the
Puritans and the F. F. V.’s find themselves in an unconsidered minority.
But why, I again ask, why should it be so, and why do our young
men need to be urged, from political or any other reasons, to make
themselves the “happiest of men?”
Of course I know that the question has been asked before and
variously answered. But no answer that ever I have heard has met
the requirements, and I almost fancy that it must remain one of the
conundrums without reply which, like snags and bowlders, still obstruct
the stream of time.
One reason, doubtless, is the one most frequently given--the
necessities of modern life are too many and too expensive for a young
man to rashly undertake.
“The luxuries of one generation become the necessities of the
next.” It is a sharply true aphorism and none the less true
because it is a well-worn truism. It might indeed be amplified,
for the luxuries of three generations ago are almost disdained by
us. Our great-grandmothers were carried about in sedan chairs, our
grandmothers drove in chaises and sometimes chariots, our mothers had
family “carryalls,” and the lady of fashion to-day has her brougham
and victoria, with liveried coachman and foot-man, and a pair of
magnificent horses.
Naturally a young man would feel more sure of being able to provide
his wife with a sedan chair, a chaise, or even a chariot, than with
a brougham. This is one reason; and another is that girls enter upon
matrimony with very different intentions and plans of life than they
used to. To be a good housekeeper, a good wife, a good mother, was
formerly the ambition of a bride, even in the highest circle, and where
the husband was yet to come, the young wife knew how to economize in
all sorts of pretty ways, and to do a good deal with her own hands, not
only to beautify the home but to make it comfortable.