After All, Says the New York "Times,"
It Is Doubtless Better for Man to Be
Chosen Than for Him to Choose.
Taking up a discussion inaugurated by the _St. James Gazette_, of London,
the New York _Times_ says what it has to say on the subject of choosing
wives.
The English paper said frankly that the title would better be "The Choice
of a Husband," inasmuch as the male, though unaware of the fact, is
generally not the pursuer, but the pursued. This condition, however, is by
no means to the discredit of woman.
As the _Times_ remarks, "A young woman whose intentions are both serious
and honorable has nothing at all to be ashamed of in endeavoring by all
womanly means to acquire the man whom she believes she can make happy and
knows that she means to try to."
In America and England there is objection to the man who marries for any
other reason than being in love. Yet the _mariage de convenance_ is not
altogether without legitimate recommendations. To quote the _Times_:
If one is really bent on making a marriage of reason instead
of waiting for a "call," excellent recipes may be given him.
A wise man once advised his son, who had shown some
disposition to choose instead of waiting to be chosen, to
"look for a good woman's daughter." It would be hard to find
any better basis for a happy union.
In general, of course, mixed marriages, whether the mixture
be of religion or of country, would be viewed by a wise
adviser with apprehension, although Lord Curzon's experience
is only one of very many as to the possible happiness of
marriages between persons of different nationalities, much
more alike as are the nationalities of Lord and Lady Curzon
than any other two nationalities.
Dr. Johnson's famous saying that marriages would be happier
if they were arranged by the Lord Chancellor, due regard
being paid to the ages and conditions of the parties, has
never been accepted as a working rule in his own country. In
France, again, there is the wholly "reasonable" and
extremely circumspect Count Boni Castellane, whose marriage
of reason has so lately been shown to be so far from a
success.
There are quite enough more failures of the same kind to
offset the unhappy marriages of romance. It is of these, of
course, that Burton declares that matches are made in
heaven, though matches of the sulfurous kind, of which all
of us know some instances, suggest a very different place of
manufacture.
The Marriage of Reason.
Swift's saying that the reason why so few marriages are
happy is that "young ladies spend their time in making nets,
not in making cages," is doubly outrageous. In the first
place, it is an outrageous begging of the question. The
testimony of less cynical observers in our day and country
is that most marriages are entitled to be called happy.
In the second place, it outrageously puts the whole blame
for unhappy marriages on the female partner, contrary alike
to probability and to fact. But at least as many of the
marriages are failures in which men "choose" their wives, or
think they do, as in cases in which men become the prey of
their own imaginations.
And there is this to be said from the point of view of
reason in favor of marriages with which reason has nothing
to do. In the first months of married life there are
necessarily very many differences to be adjusted and small
incompatibilities of ways of thinking and feeling to be
reconciled. That, as all experienced spouses know, is the
trying period.
Marriage is like life in that it is a school wherein whoso
does not learn must suffer. Now, to diminish the friction of
this trying time no better lubricant could possibly be
provided than the romantic love, which cannot be expected to
last forever, but which may very probably outlast this
greatest necessity for it of the early connubial period.
When the glamour of the romance "fades into the light of
common day," and a real man and a real woman take the places
of the creatures of each other's fancy, and passion cools
into at best the tenderest of friendships, both parties are
better off, and will acknowledge themselves to be better off
because the romance has been.