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MODERN MARRIAGE
And How To Bear It
BY
MAUD
CHURTON
BRABY
AUTHOR
OF
"DOWNWARD"
* * * * *
* * * *
MODERN MARRIAGE AND HOW TO BEAR IT
* * * * *
* * * *
NEW SHILLING REPRINTS
+LOVE INTRIGUES OF ROYAL COURTS.+ By THORNTON HALL.
+FALLEN AMONG THIEVES.+ By STANLEY PORTAL HYATT.
+THE UNCOUNTED COST.+ By MARY GAUNT.
+SIX WOMEN.+ By VICTORIA CROSS.
+DOWNWARD.+ By MAUD CHURTON BRABY.
+SCARLET KISS.+ By GERTIE DE S. WENTWORTH-JAMES.
+MISS FERRIBY'S CLIENTS.+ By FLORENCE WARDEN.
+RED LOVE.+ By GERTIE DE S. WENTWORTH-JAMES.
+MODERN MARRIAGE AND HOW TO BEAR IT.+ By MAUD CHURTON BRABY.
+BIOGRAPHY FOR BEGINNERS.+ By G. K. CHESTERTON. With 48 Illustrations.
+WHAT MEN LIKE IN WOMEN.+ By the Author of "How to be Happy
though Married."
+THE SALVING OF A DERELICT.+ By MAURICE DRAKE.
+THE NIGHT-SIDE OF LONDON.+ By ROBERT MACKRAY. With 65 Pictures
by TOM BROWNE.
+LADY JIM OF CURZON STREET.+ By FERGUS HUME.
+2835 MAYFAIR.+ By FRANK RICHARDSON.
+THE WILD WIDOW.+ By GERTIE DE S. WENTWORTH-JAMES.
+LETTERS TO A DAUGHTER.+ By HUBERT BLAND.
+THE GAME OF BRIDGE.+ By "CUT CAVENDISH." With New Rules of Bridge
and Auction Bridge.
+THE NIGHT-SIDE OF PARIS.+ By E. B. D'AUVERGNE. 20 Plates.
+THE WEANING.+ By JAMES BLYTH.
+THE METHODS OF MR AMES.+ By the Author of "John Johns."
+THE HAPPY MORALIST.+ By HUBERT BLAND.
+THE KING AND ISABEL.+ By the Author of "John Johns."
+THE SINEWS OF WAR.+ By EDEN PHILLPOTTS and ARNOLD BENNETT.
+MODERN WOMAN AND HOW TO MANAGE HER.+ By WALTER GALLICHAN.
_Press Notices Of_
MODERN MARRIAGE
_And How to Bear it_
PRESS NOTICES
+W. T. Stead in the Review of Reviews.+--"Mrs Maud Churton Braby has
achieved a remarkable success. She has written an original book upon the
most threadbare of all subjects, in which she has been as witty as she
is wise . . . packed full of good sense, sound morality, and admirable
advice. It is a book naked and unashamed, written by a woman of the
world with the naïve simplicity of an innocent child, and arriving on
the whole at conclusions worthy of any mother in Israel; a book full of
profound wisdom irradiated by a pleasant wit and suffused with the glow
of a genuine human sympathy."
+"Hubert" in the Sunday Chronicle.+--"On the whole I congratulate Mrs
Braby on her book . . . it is the only book on the subject of Modern
Marriage that has not made me feel rather ill . . . frank, without the
slightest indelicacy, and bold without the least impertinence . . . a
real contribution towards the solution of an intolerably difficult
problem."
+Daily Telegraph.+--"Lively and frank . . . should prove instructive as
well as readable and provide people with plenty to think about. The
author has read widely, and thought deeply, and has a sufficiently broad
mind to give her conclusions real value . . . should be read by all who
think seriously on this most serious subject."
+Standard.+--"A good deal of sound thinking has gone to the book's
composition and it is also illumined by a very kind and tender spirit."
+Bystander.+--"A clever and most entertaining volume . . . the reader
may be assured of much that is sage and sound, and much that is witty."
+Black & White.+--"No one has gone so fully and vigorously into the
various problems connected with marriage as Mrs Braby in her extremely
readable book . . . one of the most vivid and original contributions to
the discussion of a great problem that have appeared for a long time."
+Literary World.+--"Very brightly written, and even when most audacious
is full of good feeling and good sense . . . amusing and shrewd . . .
clever and stimulating."
_By The Same Author_
DOWNWARD:
An Attempt To Portray A
"Slice Of Life."
_A NOVEL._
By MAUD CHURTON BRABY
(_Author of "MODERN MARRIAGE AND HOW TO BEAR IT."_)
6s.
This is a powerful study of modern life in London, and concerns the
hearts and passions of live men and women. Being the first novel by Mrs
Maud Churton Braby, author of that vivacious and daring book, "Modern
Marriage and How to Bear it." As might be expected, some of the serious
problems of women are dealt with in its pages. The story concerns the
fortunes of brilliant and undisciplined Dolly who, on the death of her
mother, an actress, is compelled by the decree of a mysterious trustee
to go first to a convent-school and afterwards become a hospital nurse.
Her temptations and adventures at the Wimpole Street Nursing Home--
(in which environment other characters of much interest appear) --her
tragic love affair, and the depths to which it brings her, together with
her subsequent redemption, are related in a manner which makes a special
appeal to the heart.
* * * * *
* * * *
MODERN MARRIAGE
AND HOW TO BEAR IT
by
MAUD CHURTON BRABY
"Marriage is the origin and summit of all
civilisation."--GOETHE.
_POPULAR EDITION_
T. WERNER LAURIE
Clifford's Inn
London
CONTENTS
PART I
SIGNS OF UNREST
Chap. Page
I. The Mutual Dissatisfaction of the Sexes 3
II. Why Men Don't Marry 14
III. Why Women Don't Marry 26
IV. The Tragedy of the Undesired 42
PART II
CAUSES OF FAILURE
I. The Various Kinds of Marriage 57
II. Why We Fall Out: Divers Discords 68
III. The Age to Marry 85
IV. Wild Oats for Wives 89
V. A Plea for the Wiser Training of Girls 101
VI. 'Keeping Only to Her'--The Crux of Matrimony 109
PART III
SUGGESTED ALTERNATIVES
I. Leasehold Marriage à la Meredith 119
II. Leasehold Marriage in Practice:
A Dialogue in 1999 129
III. The Fiasco of Free Love 141
IV. Polygamy at the Polite Dinner-Table 146
V. Is Legalised Polyandry the Solution? 159
VI. A Word for 'Duogamy' 161
VII. The Advantages of the Preliminary Canter 171
PART IV
CHILDREN--THE _CUL-DE-SAC_ OF ALL REFORMS
I. To Beget or Not to Beget--the Question
of the Day 177
II. The Pros and Cons of the Limited Family 184
III. Parenthood: The Highest Destiny 193
PART V
HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED
I. A Few Suggestions for Reform 203
II. Some Practical Advice to Husbands and Wives 209
To
C. STANLEY CHURTON
The Best Father in the World
With Deep Gratitude
for a Lifetime of Loving-Kindness
PART I
SIGNS OF UNREST
'The Subject of Marriage is kept too much in the dark. Air it!
Air it!'--GEORGE MEREDITH.
MODERN MARRIAGE
I
THE MUTUAL DISSATISFACTION OF THE SEXES
'The shadow of marriage waits, resolute and awful, at the
cross-roads.' --R. L. STEVENSON.
Ever since the time, nineteen years ago, when Mrs Mona Caird attacked
the institution of matrimony in the _Westminster Review_ and led the way
for the great discussion on 'Is Marriage a Failure?' in the _Daily
Telegraph_--marriage has been the hardy perennial of newspaper
correspondence, and an unfailing resource to worried sub-editors. When
seasons are slack and silly, the humblest member of the staff has but to
turn out a column on this subject, and whether it be a serious
dissertation on 'The Perfections of Polygamy' or a banal discussion on
'Should husbands have tea at home?' it will inevitably achieve the
desired result, and fill the spare columns of the papers with letters
for weeks to come. People are always interested in matrimony, whether
from the objective or subjective point of view, and that is my excuse
for perpetrating yet another book on this well-worn, but ever fertile
topic.
Marriage indeed seems to be in the air more than ever in this year of
grace; everywhere it is discussed, and very few people seem to have a
good word to say for it. The most superficial observer must have noticed
that there is being gradually built up in the community a growing dread
of the conjugal bond, especially among men; and a condition of
discontent and unrest among married people, particularly women. What is
the matter with this generation that wedlock has come to assume so
distasteful an aspect in their eyes? On every side one hears it vilified
and its very necessity called in question. From the pulpit, the clergy
endeavour to uphold the sanctity of the institution, and unceasingly
exhort their congregations to respect it and abide by its laws. But the
Divorce Court returns make ominous reading; every family solicitor will
tell you his personal experience goes to prove that happy unions are
considerably on the decrease, and some of the greatest thinkers of our
day join in a chorus of condemnation against latter-day marriage.
Tolstoy says: 'The relations between the sexes are searching for a new
form, the old one is falling to pieces.' Among the manuscript 'remains'
of Ibsen, that profound student of human nature, the following
noteworthy passage occurs: '"Free-born men" is a phrase of rhetoric.
They do not exist, for marriage, the relation between man and wife, has
corrupted the race and impressed the mark of slavery upon all.' Not long
ago, too, our greatest living novelist, George Meredith, created an
immense sensation by his suggestion that marriage should become a
temporary arrangement, with a minimum lease of, say, ten years.
That the time has not yet come for any such revolutionary change is
obvious, but if the signs and portents of the last decade or two do not
lie, we may safely assume that the time _will_ come, and that the
present legal conditions of wedlock will be altered in some way or
other.
Fifteen years ago there was a sudden wave of rebellion against these
conditions, and a renewed interest in the sex question showed itself in
an outbreak of problem novels--a term which later came to be used as one
of reproach. Perhaps the most important of these was Grant Allen's _The
Woman Who Did_. I can recall as a schoolgirl the excitement it aroused
and my acute disappointment when it was forcibly commandeered from me by
an irate governess who apparently took no interest in these enthralling
subjects. A host of imitators followed _The Woman Who Did_; some of them
entirely illiterate, all of them offering some infallible key to the
difficult maze of marriage.
Worse still was the reaction that inevitably followed, when realism was
tabooed in fiction, and sickly romance possessed the field. _The Yellow
Book_ and similar strange exotics of the first period withered and died,
and the cult of literature (!) for the British Home was shortly
afterwards in full blast. There followed an avalanche of insufferably
dull and puerile magazines, in which the word _Sex_ was strictly taboo,
and the ideal aimed at was apparently the extreme opposite to real life.
It was odd how suddenly the sex note--(as I will call it for want of a
better word)--disappeared from the press. Psychology was pronounced
'off,' and plots were the order of the day. Many names well-known at
that time and associated with a _flair_ for delicate delineation of
character, disappeared from the magazine contents bill and the
publisher's list, whilst facile writers who could turn out mild
detective yarns or tales of adventure and gore were in clover.
Signs are not wanting that the pendulum of public interest has now swung
back again, and another wave of realism in fiction and inquiry into the
re-adjustment of the conjugal bond is imminent. But the pendulum will
have to swing back and forth a good many times however, before the
relations between the sexes succeed in finding that new form of which
Tolstoy speaks. What the revival I have foretold will accomplish remains
to be seen. What did the last agitation achieve? Practically nothing;
a few women may have been impelled to follow in the footsteps of Grant
Allen's Herminia to their undying sorrow, and possibly a good many
precocious young girls, who read the literature of that day, may have
given their parents some anxiety by their revolutionary ideas on the
value of the holy estate. But when that trio so irresistible to the
feminine heart came along--the Ring, the Trousseau, and the House of My
Own, to say nothing of the solid, twelve-stone, prospective
husband--which among these advanced damsels remembered the sermon on the
hill-top?
Yet in the fourteen years that have elapsed since the publication of
_The Woman Who Did_, there have certainly been some changes. For one
thing, it is still harder apparently to earn a decent living. Times
are bad and money scarce; men are even more reluctant than before to
'domesticate the recording angel' by marrying, and a type of woman has
sprung up amongst us who is shy of matrimony and honestly reluctant to
risk its many perils for the sake of its problematical joys. Most
noticeable of all is the growing dissatisfaction of the sexes with each
other. Men do not shun marriage only because of unfavourable financial
conditions, or because the restrictions of wedlock are any more irksome
to them than formerly, but because they cannot find a wife sufficiently
near their ideal. Woman has progressed to such an extent within the
last generation or two: her outlook has so broadened, her intellect
so developed that she has strayed very far from man's ideal and,
consequently, man hesitates to marry her. There is something comic about
the situation, and at Olympian dinner-tables I feel sure the gods would
laugh at this twentieth-century conjugal deadlock.
Another reason why men fall in love so much less than they used to do is
largely due to the decay of the imaginative faculty. As for women,
although they are in the main as anxious to marry as ever, although it
is universally acknowledged that the modern young woman does cultivate
the modern young man unduly, their reasons for doing so are less and
less concerned with the time-honoured motives of love. Marriage brings
independence and a certain social importance; for these reasons women
desire it. H. B. Marriot Watson has put the case neatly thus: 'Women
desire to marry _a_ man; men to marry _the_ woman.' Nevertheless women
are even now more prone to fall in love than are men, because they have
better preserved this imaginative faculty, which is possibly also the
cause of the disillusionment and discontent of wives after marriage.
The upshot of it all is that men and women appear to have become
antagonistic to each other. However much they love the individual of
their fancy, a kind of veiled distrust seems to obtain between the sexes
collectively, but more especially on the part of men--perhaps because
man is more necessary to woman than woman is to man. This hostility
towards woman is particularly noticeable in the pages of the press.
Scarcely a week passes but some journalist of the nobler sex pours out
his scorn for the inferior one of his mother in columns of masterly
abuse on one score or another. Each article is followed by a passionate
correspondence in which 'Disgusted Dad,' 'Hopeless Hubby,' 'Browbeaten
Brother,' and the inevitable 'Cynicus' express high approval of the
writer, whilst 'Happy Mother of Seven Girls' and 'Lover of the Sex'
write to demand his instant execution and public disgrace.
The range of men's fault-finding is endless; one will assert that women
are mere domestic machines, unfit companions for any intelligent man,
and with no soul above conversation about their servants and children;
another that they are mere blue-stockings striving after an unattainable
intellectuality; a third that they are mere frivolous dolls without
brain or heart, engrossed in the pursuit of pleasure, a fourth that they
are sexless, slangy, misclad masculine monsters.
Judged by the assertions of newspaper correspondents, women are at one
and the same time preposterously masculine, contemptibly feminine,
ridiculously intellectual, repulsively athletic, and revoltingly
frivolous. In appearance they are either lank, gaunt, flat-footed
lamp-posts, or else over-dressed, unnaturally-shaped, painted dolls.
Their extravagance exhausts expletive! When they belong to the class of
society generally denoted with a capital S, they invariably smoke,
drink, gamble and swear. They neglect their homes and their children.
They have little principle and less sense, no morals, no heart and
absolutely _no_ sense of humour!
'But,' the observant reader may possibly exclaim, 'there is nothing new
about this. Woman has ever been man's favourite grumble-vent, from the
day when the first man got out of his first scrape by blaming the only
available woman!' True enough, age cannot stale the infinite variety of
women's misdemeanours, as viewed by men; tradition has hallowed the
subject, custom carries it on; and probably when the last trump shall
sound, the last living man will be found grumbling loudly at the
abominable selfishness of woman for leaving him alone, and the last dead
man to rise will awake cursing because his wife did not call him sooner!
But formerly man's fault-finding was more of the nature of genial chaff,
as when we affectionately laugh at those we love. There was nearly
always a certain good humour about his diatribes, which now is lacking.
In its stead can be noted a bitterness, a distinct animus. Men
apparently take with an ill-grace women's rebellion against the old
man-made conditions, and they retaliate by falling in love less
frequently, and showing still more reluctance to enter the arena of
matrimony.
Nevertheless, they get there all the same, albeit in a different spirit.
Timorous and trembling, our faint-hearted modern lovers gird on their
new frock-coats and step shrinkingly into the arena where awaits
them--radiant and triumphant--the determined being whose will has
brought them thither. No, not _her_ will, but the mysterious will of
Nature which remains steadfast and of unswerving purpose, indifferent
to our sex-warfare and the progress of our petty loves and hates. The
institution of marriage battered, abused, scarred with countless
thousands of attacks, stained with the sins of centuries still continues
to flourish, for, as Schopenhauer says; '_It is the future generation in
its entire individual determination which forces itself into existence
through the medium of all this strife and trouble._'
The _Will-to-Live_ will always have the last word!
II
WHY MEN DON'T MARRY
'If you wish the pick of mankind, take a good bachelor and a good
wife.'
'There is probably no other act in a man's life so hot-headed and
foolish as this of marriage.' --R. L. STEVENSON.
'Whatever may be said against marriage, it is certainly an
experience.' --OSCAR WILDE.
'All the men are getting married and none of the girls,' a volatile lady
is once reported to have said, and one understands what she meant to
convey. In a newspaper correspondence on marriage I once noted the
following significant passage: '_But in these days it is different from
what it was when I was a girl. Then every boy had his sweetheart and
every girl her chap. Now it seems to me the boys don't want sweethearts
and the girls can't get chaps. For one youth who means honestly to marry
a girl, you will find twenty whose game is mere flirtation, regardless
of how the girl may be injured. The times are ungallant and they want
mending._'
This letter is signed 'A Workman's Wife,' but it bears ample evidence of
having been written by a member of the staff, who seemed to consider
sufficient _vraisemblance_ had been given to the signature by the
inclusion of an occasional vulgarism, such as 'chap.' But in spite of
being penned to order, the statements expressed appear to be only too
true. The times are ungallant indeed and growing more so every year.
Not long ago I was at a cheery social gathering where the non-marrying
tendency of modern men was being discussed. Someone put all the men into
a good humour with the reminder that 'by persistently remaining single,
a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation,' and as there
were fifteen bachelors present, the conversation naturally became
personal.
One whom I will call Vivian, gallantly remarked that all the nice women
were married, so he perforce remained single. I happen to know that he
is deeply in love with a married woman. Another, Lucian, a very handsome
and popular man of thirty, said he fully meant to marry some day, but
wanted a few more years' freedom first. Dorian gravely asserted that he
was waiting for my daughter (aged eighteen months), but being in his
confidence, I know that his case is similar to Vivian's. Hadrian's
health would make his marriage a crime; we are all aware of that
fortunately, so no one asked him. The same discretion was observed with
regard to Julien of whom it is well known that he has formed an
'unfortunate' attachment and has practically not the right to marry.
Florian was jilted years ago, and is shy and distrustful of the sex,
which is a great pity, as he is the kind of man born for fireside and
nursery joys, and would make a wife very happy.
Of Augustin and Fabian it may be truly said that 'the more they have
known of the others, the less they will settle to one;' and indeed I
fear they have spoilt themselves for matrimony, unless there is truth in
the old saying that a reformed rake makes the best husband. Endymion is
altogether too ineligible, his blue eyes and broad shoulders being his
only fortune; he makes plenty of capital out of these adjuncts: they
bring him in a rich return of feminine favour, but are nevertheless
hardly sufficient to support a wife.
Claudian is really anxious to marry, but suffers from a fatal
faithlessness and, as he engagingly explains, can't love a girl long
enough to get the preliminaries settled. One day he is sure to be caught
by some determined and probably very unsuitable woman and led reluctant
to the altar. Galahad won't marry until he has found 'the one woman,'
and I fear he will prove a husband wasted, for poor Galahad already
wears spectacles and a bald spot; his devotion to an unrealisable ideal
bids fair to spoil his life.
When I put the question to Aurelian, he smiled his evil smile, which
makes him more like an embittered vulture than ever, and remarked that
he was thinking over his offers and hadn't yet decided which was the
best. As the fact that he has been refused by seven women is well-known,
we really rather admire the persistence of his pose as a lady-killer.
He has even been known to write passionate letters to himself, in an
assumed hand, and drop cleverly-manufactured tears here and there upon
them, to give an air of greater realism to these amorous masterpieces,
which he uses as a proof of his wild stories of conquest. When dry, the
tears look most life-like; of course it is a dodge that every schoolgirl
knows, but I have never known a man have recourse to it before, and hope
never to again!
Both Cyprian and Valerian gave as the reason for their continued
bachelorhood, the fact that they were too comfortable as bachelors and
had never felt the need of a wife. The latter added that if he could
find just _the_ girl, he would think it over, but as matters stood he
preferred certainty to chance and was taking no risks. Between
ourselves, both these two are very self-satisfied and egotistical
persons, and I don't think any woman has lost much by their resolve.
The fourteenth man was Bayard, who belongs to a very exasperating type
of philanderer. Most women of the world have met and been bored by him
to their sorrow. It is his grievous habit to go about professing a
yearning for matrimony of the most ideal kind, and confiding at great
length to safely attached young matrons how he longs to find a home in
one good woman's heart, and what a great, pure, passionate, wild love he
is capable of. There is something rather engaging about him, and his
pose is naturally very attractive to unsuspecting spinsters. He is
always getting desperately entangled, but makes a great parade of his
poverty when the _affaire_ reaches the critical point, and wriggles out
successfully--generally without any too unpleasant explanation. If,
however, things have gone too far for this, he can always make good his
escape under cover of the 'I love you too much, darling, to drag you
down to poverty' plea. How many girls, wounded to the heart's core, have
listened to this hoary lie when they are more than willing to be poor,
if but with him, willing to economise and save, and forego for his sake.
Not, of course, that Bayard and his like inspire such devotion; I mean
that the essentials of this particular excuse are given by very many
unmarried men nowadays as the reason of their single state. Generally
speaking, there are two main reasons why men do not marry: 1. Because
they have not yet met a woman they care for sufficiently; 2.--and these
constitute a large majority--because they are too selfish. Of course men
don't spell it that way. Like Bayard, they say they 'can't afford it.'
They think of all the things they would have to give up--how difficult
it is to get enough for their pleasure now, how impossible it would be
then, with the support of a wife and potential family added; how they
would hate having to knock off poker, find a cheaper tailor, and
economise in golf balls. They shudder at the prospect, and decide in the
expressively vulgar parlance of the day that it's 'not good enough.' The
things that are beyond price are weighed against the things that are
bought with money--and found wanting!
It would, however, be the last word of foolishness to encourage
improvident marriages, already a source of so much misery, and of course
my remarks do not apply to the genuine poverty of the man who really
cannot afford to wed. For him I have a very real sympathy, since he is
missing the best things of life probably through no fault of his own.
The above strictures are intended solely for the man of moderate means,
who could afford to marry if he loved himself less and some woman more.
Five hundred a year, for instance, is a comfortable income for a
bachelor not in the inner circle of Society. On this sum a middle-class
man can do himself well, provided he has no particularly expensive vices
or hobbies--but it certainly means self-denial when stretched to provide
for a wife and two or three children. It means a small house in one of
the cheaper suburbs, instead of a bachelor flat in town, 'buses instead
of cabs, upper boxes instead of stalls, a fortnight _en famille_ at
Broadstairs instead of a month's fishing _en garçon_ in Norway. It means
no more suppers at the Savoy, no more week-ends in Paris, no more
'running' over to Monte Carlo; but it _can_ be done, and done happily,
provided a man puts love above luxuries. Almost every man can afford to
marry--the right woman!
Of course, if a man has still to meet the woman of his fancy, all is
well, but it is the despicable plea of Bayard that so incenses me. If
men would own the truth, it would not be so bad, but, Adam-like, as
usual, they lay the blame on women and say: 'Girls expect so much
nowadays, it is impossible to make enough money to satisfy them.' This
is one of the many lies men tell about women, or perhaps they are under
a delusion and really believe the statement to be true. Let them be
undeceived, girls _don't_ expect so much; they are perfectly willing to
be poor, as I have said before, if only they care for the man enough. At
anyrate, once they have reached that stage of wanting the real things of
life they would sooner have wifehood and comparative poverty than ease
and empty hearts in their parents' home. They would sooner, in short,
be 'tired wives than restful spinsters.'
Another delusion men spread about women is that they're too fond of
pleasure to settle down. How often one hears statements such as 'Juno
Jones wouldn't make a good wife, she's out all day playing golf;' or
'I couldn't afford to marry Sappho Smith, she's too fond of dress and
theatre-going.' God bless the man! What else have the poor girls to do?
Sappho has a taste for dainty clothes and a love for the theatre; she
fills her empty existence with these things as far as she can; Juno has
nothing in the wide world to do all day long, but she loves the open
air, and so concentrates her magnificent energies on a game with a stick
and ball, because any active part in the great game of life is denied
her. Marry her--if she will have you--and see what a grand comrade she
will make, and what splendid children she will bear you. Or marry
Sappho, and you will find she will never want any but simple pleasures
within your means, as long as you are kind to her and adore her as she
requires to be adored. She will cheerfully make her own clothes, and
find her greatest joy in planning out your income and adorning your
home.
Everyone can recall having known frivolous and pleasure-loving girls
settle down into admirable wives whose nurseries are models and whose
households are beyond reproach. Doubtless their friends all predicted
disaster when these butterflies were led to the altar. I honestly
believe women only want extravagant pleasures when they are miserable.
It is generally the wretched wives, the unhappy, restless spinsters who
run up bills and fling away money. They feel that life is cheating them
and they must have some compensations.
But to return to my fifteen bachelors. There only remains Florizel,
whose attitude towards wedlock is a blend of that of Bayard and
Claudian. He is genuinely eager to marry, ardent, affectionate, anxious
to do right, but lacking in moral courage and egotistical to the point
of disease. I would much like to see him happily wedded, as he then
would doubtless quickly lose that intense self-centredness, but I
question if any attractive woman exists who would be unselfish enough to
cope with him in his present state of egomania. His mind is always
inflamed with some woman or other, and he hovers about on the edge of
desperate _amours_, anxious to fall head over ears into the sea of love
and cast out an anchor of matrimony to hold him fast where he can swerve
no more. Unfortunately he cannot forget himself enough to take the fatal
plunge. With all his faults there is something very lovable about
Florizel, and I should like to see him knocked into shape, though it
would be a brave and patient woman who would take the task in hand.
When all the fifteen bachelors had ceased to talk about themselves and
settled down to bridge with the rest of the company, an old lady who,
like myself, preferred to be a looker-on, came and sat beside me. 'How
they _do_ talk,' she said! 'But I can tell you why they don't marry, in
six words, my dear: because they don't fall in love! And why don't they
fall in love? Because the girls are too eager; because the girls meet
them all the way--that's why! I've seven sons, all unmarried, and _I_
know!'
* * *
NOTE.--It is interesting to note that Westermarck in his _History of
Human Marriage_ quotes a number of authorities to prove that among many
ancient nations marriage was a religious duty incumbent upon all. Among
Mohammedan people generally it is still considered a duty. Hebrew
celibacy was unheard of, and they have a proverb, 'He who has no wife is
no man.' In Egypt it is improper and even disreputable for a man to
abstain from marriage when there is no just impediment. For an adult to
die unmarried is regarded as a deplorable misfortune by the Chinese,
and among the Hindus of the present day a man who remains single is
considered to be almost a useless member of society, and is looked upon
as beyond the pale of nature.
III
WHY WOMEN DON'T MARRY
'It's a woman's business to get married as soon as possible and a
man's to remain unmarried as long as he can.' --G. BERNARD SHAW.
'Marriage is of so much use to a woman, opens out to her so much
of life, and puts her in the way of so much more freedom and
usefulness, that whether she marry ill or well, she can hardly
miss some benefit.' --R. L. STEVENSON.
'Why women don't marry? But they do--whenever they can!' the intelligent
reader will naturally exclaim. Not 'whenever they get the chance,' mark
you; no _intelligent_ reader would make this mistake, though it is a
common enough error among the non-comprehending. Most spinsters over
thirty must have winced at one time or another at the would-be genial
rallying of some elderly man relative: 'What! you not married yet? Well,
well, I wonder what all the young men are thinking of.' I write _some
man_ advisedly, for no woman, however cattishly inclined, however
desirous of planting arrows in a rival's breast, would utter this
peculiarly deadly form of insult, which, strangely enough, is always
intended as a high compliment by the masculine blunderer. The fact that
the unfortunate spinster thus assailed may have had a dozen offers, and
yet, for reasons of her own, prefer to remain single, seems entirely
beyond their range of comprehension.
But the main reason why women don't marry is obviously because men don't
ask them. Most women will accept when a sufficiently pleasing man offers
them a sufficiently congenial life. If the offers they receive fall
below a certain standard, then they prefer to remain single, wistfully
hoping, no doubt, that the right man may come along before it is too
late. The preservation of the imaginative faculty in women, to which I
have previously alluded, doubtless accounts for many spinsters. It must
also be remembered that the more educated women become, the less likely
they are to marry for marrying's sake as their grandmothers did.
Then there are a few women, quite a small section, who, unless they can
realise their ideal in its entirety, will not be content with second
best. By an irony of fate, it happens that these are often the noblest
of their sex. Yet another small section remain single from an honest
dislike of marriage and its duties. It is perhaps not too severe to say
that a woman who has absolutely no vocation for wifehood and motherhood
must be a degenerate, and so lacking in the best feminine instincts as
to deserve the reproach of being 'sexless.' This type is apparently
increasing! I shall deal with it further in Part IV.
Then there are those--I should not like to make a guess at their
number--who will marry _any_ man, however undesirable and uncongenial,
rather than be left 'withering on the stalk.' It is an acutely
humiliating fact that there exists no man too ugly, too foolish, too
brutal, too conceited and too vile to find a wife. _Any_ man can find
_some_ woman to wed him. In this connection, one recalls the famous
cook, who, when condoled with on the defection of a lover, replied:
'It don't matter; thank God I can love any man!'
One cannot help being amused by the serious articles on this subject in
feminine journals. We are gravely told that women don't marry nowadays
because they price their liberty too high, because those who have money
prefer to be independent and enjoy life, and those who have none prefer
bravely wringing a living from the world to being a man's slave, a mere
drudge, entirely engrossed in housekeeping, etc., etc.; and so on--pages
of it! All this may possibly be true of a very small portion of the
community, but the uncontrovertible fact remains that the principal
reason for woman's spinsterhood is man's indifference.
I have every sympathy with the women who wish to postpone taking up the
heavy responsibilities of matrimony till they have had what in the
opposite sex is termed 'a fling,' that is until they have enjoyed a
period of freedom wherein to study, to travel, to enjoy their youth
fully, to meet many men, to look life in the eyes and learn something of
its meaning. But there comes a period in the life of almost every
woman--except the aforesaid degenerate--when she feels it is time to
'put away childish things,' and into her heart there steals a longing
for the real things of life--the things that matter, the things that
last--wedded love and little children, and that priceless possession,
a home of one's own.
It is the fashion nowadays to discredit the home, and it has been
jestingly alluded to by Mr Bernard Shaw as 'the girl's prison and the
woman's workhouse;' but what a wonderful sanctuary it really is!--and
exactly how much it means to a woman, only those who have felt the need
of it can tell. In our youth, home is the place where hampers come from,
where string and stamps and magazines grow on the premises, a place
generally where love is, but nevertheless essentially a place we take
for granted and for which we never dream of being grateful. Later on it
is sometimes associated with irksome duties; to some it even becomes a
place to get away from; but when we have lost it, how we long for it!
How reverently we think of each room and the things that happened there;
how we yearn in thought over the old garden and dream about the beloved
trees. No matter how mean a home it may have been, every bit of it is
sacred and dear--from the box-room, where on wet days we played at
robbers, to the toolshed, where on fine days we played at everything
under the sun. To this day if I chance on a badly-cooked potato it
almost brings tears to my eyes, not because of its badness, but because
it recalls the potatoes that three small children used to cook with
gladness and eat with silent awe, in the ashes of a bonfire, in an old
garden, long, long ago--whilst the smell of a bonfire itself makes me
feel seven years old again!
But whether she has a home with her parents or not, every normal woman
longs for a home of her own, and a girl who resents even arranging the
flowers on her mother's dinner-table will after marriage cheerfully do
quite distasteful housework in the place she calls her own.
This passionate love of home is one of the most marked feminine
characteristics; I don't mean love of being _at_ home, as modern women's
tastes frequently lie elsewhere, but love of the place itself and the
desire to possess it. A great number of women marry solely to obtain
this coveted possession. As for those who don't, the advertisement
columns of the _Church Times_, the _Christian World_, and other papers
tell a pitiful story of their need. Ladies 'by birth' (pathetic and
foolish little phrase!) are willing to do almost anything in return for
just a modest corner, a very subordinate place even in someone else's
home. They will be housekeepers, servants, companions, secretaries,
helps for 'a small salary and a home,' and sometimes for no salary at
all. They will pack, sew, mend, teach, supervise; they offer their
knowledge of every kind, such as it is, their music, their languages,
their health and strength, their subservience and all their virtues,
real or acquired--all in return for a little food and fire, and the
sheltering of four walls, which constitute their extreme need, their
utmost desire--a home! Beautiful women, gifted and good women, sell
themselves daily just to gain a home. Even Hedda Gabler, most degenerate
of modern heroines, who shot herself rather than be a mother, sold
herself in a loveless marriage only for a home. And yet constantly we
read a list of trivial and fantastic reasons why women don't marry!
A girl-bachelor who was compelled to spend most of her time in that
uncomfortable place technically known as 'one's boxes,' once told me
that her greatest desire was a spot just big enough for a wardrobe in
which to keep her spare clothes and little possessions. She did without
a home, but she longed intensely for that wardrobe. 'I shall have to
marry Tony soon,' she said, 'just for the convenience of having room for
my clothes. I don't like him, and I want to wait till someone I do like
comes, but if ever I take him, it will be for wardrobe room, you just
see.' I must add that 'someone' _did_ come, and she now possesses
several wardrobes and three bouncing babies, and Tony cuts her when he
meets her in the Park!
This home passion is even more noticeable in that class of society
usually referred to as the lower. I have occasionally employed a poor
woman who has been in service as cook since her husband died nineteen
years ago. All that time, she has 'kept on the home,' _i.e._ a single
room which contains her furniture. She has scarcely ever had to use the
room, except for an odd day or two, and has had to spend much of her
scanty leisure in cleaning it. For nineteen years she has paid
three-and-six a week for the room sooner than sell her furniture. The
£172 thus expended would have paid for the furniture over and over
again. The woman quite realises the absurdity of it, but 'I simply
couldn't part with the 'ome,' is her explanation.
Yet another instance. Once when staying in seaside lodgings, I had the
misfortune to break a homely vessel of thick blue glass which had
evidently begun life as a fancy jam jar, but had been relegated, for
some reason obscure to me, to the proud position of mantel 'ornament,'
if that be the term. To my surprise the worthy landlady wept bitterly
over the pieces, and when I spoke of gorgeous objects wherewith to
replace her treasure, explained snappishly: 'Nothing won't make it good
to me! Why, that there blue vorse was the beginning of the 'ome!'
I must ask pardon for this digression and return to the subject in hand.
The most depressing aspect of the question is that even if every man
over twenty-five were married there would be still an enormous number of
women left husbandless. This is really very serious, and is a condition
that gives rise to many evils. To make up for it as far as possible,
every man of sound health and in receipt of sufficient income ought to
marry. If it is merely 'not good' for man to be alone, then it is very
bad indeed for women! Every woman should have a man companion, a man to
live with--if only to take the tickets, carry the bags and get up in the
night to see what that noise is. Since society as at present constituted
does not countenance men and women living together for companionship,
then clearly every woman ought to have a husband!
Mr Bernard Shaw has written: 'Give women the vote and in five years
there will be a crushing tax on bachelors.' So there should be, subject
to certain qualifications of age and income; this is one of the many
matters in which we should take a lesson from the Japanese where all
bachelors over a certain age are taxed; in France too, a bill, to this
effect, is being discussed. At the time of writing, women are full of
anticipation of being speedily enfranchised, and there is a good deal of
talk about what use they will make of the vote. I regret to say that
although there have been some utterly idiotic threats to abolish that
boon to wives--the man's club--yet so far, with one exception, nothing
has appeared in print as to the advisability of taxing bachelors. The
exception is a very interesting anonymous novel called _Star of the
Morning_, which strongly advocates such a tax, among several other
thoughtful suggestions for political reform.
It is obviously only just that the man who is doing nothing for the
State in the way of rearing a family should be taxed to relieve the man
who is. We hear so much about the falling birth-rate, and the duty of
every married couple to have a family, yet everything is done to
discourage those who do. The professional man slaving to earn, say,
£1000 a year, and bring up three or four children for the State, is
taxed exactly as much as the bachelor in receipt of the same income who
does nothing at all for the State, and can even avoid the other taxes by
being a lodger, if he choose.
But even if we eventually get reasonable legislation, which would offer
rewards instead of additional burdens to those who do their share in
keeping up the birth-rate; even if a bachelor over twenty-five became as
rare an object in these islands as an old maid in a Mohammedan country,
still there would be this enormous superfluity of spinsters. Why is it?
Why should Great Britain be regarded as a paradise of old maids? Why
should we have more spinsters than other countries? Is it because our
colonies swallow up so many men? Then why can't they swallow up an equal
number of women? I should like this most important matter to be taken up
by the State and an Institution for Encouraging Marriage started under
State auspices. One of the duties of this institution would be to induce
numbers of suitable women to emigrate, so as to preserve the proper
balance of the sexes in the home country, and that every colonist might
have a chance to get a wife. I heard the other day of a very ordinary
colonial girl who had eleven men all wanting to marry her at once.
Eleven men! And yet there are scores of charming English girls who grow
old and soured without having had a single offer of marriage.
Another duty of the Institution for Encouraging Marriage would be to try
and reach and bring together the thousands of lonely middle-class men
and women in large towns, who are engaged at work all day and have no
means of meeting members of the opposite sex. I have just been reading
Francis Gribble's very interesting novel, _The Pillar of Cloud_, in
which he describes the existence of half a dozen girls in 'Stonor House'
one of those dreary barracks for homeless females engaged during the
day. The frantic desire of these girls to meet men of their own class is
painfully true, and this desire is not so much the outcome of young
women's natural tendency to cultivate young men, but because all such
men to them are possible husbands, and marriage is the only way out from
Stonor House and the joyless existence there.
In _The Pathway of the Pioneer_ published a few years ago, Dolf Wyllarde
breaks similar ground, but her young women are more morbid and less
frankly anxious to meet men with a view to matrimony. Both books,
however, give one a good idea of the cheerless, unnatural lives led by
young middle-class women, whose relatives, if any, are far away, and who
work for their living in large towns--condemned almost inevitably to
celibacy by these unfavourable social conditions.
That large numbers of daintily-bred women should be condemned to such an
existence is the strongest possible argument in favour of the
establishment of two French institutions, viz., strictly limited
families and the system of _dots_. Of late years, the former has been
largely adopted in England, and until the latter custom also becomes the
rule, the Institution for Encouraging Matrimony could take the matter in
hand. Two or three unusually sensible philanthropists have already given
their attention to this important subject, but any movement of this
nature at once assumes too much the aspect of a matrimonial agency to be
approved by the class for whose welfare it is destined. However, the
I.F.E.M. would have to deal with this obstacle and conceal its real
intentions under another name. I am sure if its object were sufficiently
wrapped-up that refined men and women could take advantage of it without
loss of self-respect--the response to such an institution by both sexes
would be enormous. A club, ostensibly for promoting social intercourse,
might be the solution, and subscription dances, concerts, organised
excursions would not be difficult to arrange, and would make a source of
brightness and interest in many drab lives. Country branches could be
started if the thing proved a success.
One constantly sees in the newspapers proof of the fact that there are a
very large number of middle-class young men able and anxious to marry,
who lack feminine acquaintances of their own social standing from whom
to make a choice. Unfortunate _mésalliances_ are often the result, and
it seems to me a sad and wasteful thing that these uxoriously-inclined
men cannot be brought into contact with some of the thousands of young
women whose lives are passed in uncongenial toil and who are eating out
their hearts in their anxiety for a home and a husband of their own.
Until the I.F.E.M. becomes fact, here is splendid work ready to hand for
a philanthropist of infinite tact, and large, sympathetic heart. What a
chance to add to the sum of human joy! What a rich reward for the
expenditure of but a little time and money!
IV
THE TRAGEDY OF THE UNDESIRED
'So man and woman will keep their trust,
Till the very Springs of the Sea run dust.
'Yea, each with the other will lose and win,
For the Strife of Love's the abysmal Strife,
And the Word of Love is the Word of Life.
'And they that go with the Word unsaid,
Though they seem of the living, are damned and dead.'
--W. E. HENLEY.
This is a tragedy of which few men know the existence and certainly no
man in these woman-ridden isles can ever have experienced. Men always
treat with derision the woman anxious for matrimony, and gibe equally at
the spinster who fails to attain it. Heaven alone knows why, since by
men's laws and traditions the married state has been made to mean
everything desirable for a woman, and the unmarried condition everything
undesirable. 'People think women who do not want to marry unfeminine;
people think women who do want to marry immodest; people combine both
opinions by regarding it as unfeminine for women not to look longingly
forward to wifehood as the hope and purpose of their lives, and
ridiculing and contemning any individual woman of their acquaintance
whom they suspect of entertaining such a longing. They must wish and
not wish; they must not give, and certainly must not withhold,
encouragement--and so it goes on, each precept cancelling the last,
and most of them negative.'[1]
[Footnote 1: Augusta Webster.]
Both Mr Bernard Shaw and Mr George Moore have stated in print that women
frequently propose to men, and several men have confided in me details
of the proposals they have received from forward fair ones. I believe it
is one of the tenets of advanced women that the sex that bears the child
has a right to choose the husband. Although unpleasantly revolutionary
this seems eminently sane. That the right to choose a mate should be
open to all adults, instead of being the sole privilege of the most
selfish and least observant sex, will possibly be acknowledged in the
future, when the woman question shall be set at rest for ever.
In those far-off days there will, let us hope, be no more tragedy of
the undesired. It seems almost indelicate to apply this phrase to the
noble army of British spinsters, for the most part dignified, worthy
women, comprising ratepayers, householders, philanthropists,
mothers-in-all-but-fact--working parochially, among the poor, in
hospitals, schools, homes, offices, and studios--on public bodies,
on the staff of newspapers--generally cheerful and helpful, sometimes
clever, often charming, occasionally a little narrow perhaps, but on the
whole upholding the best traditions of their sex, and of course _never_
admitting that they would like to have married. Deep in their own
hearts, however, almost all of them must feel the sadness of their
unfulfilment, comfort themselves how they may with other interests.
Those that have engrossing occupations should be thankful, for the woman
whose whole heart is set on finding a husband and who fails to attain
this object generally becomes fretful, bitter, disappointed and useless
in every way. But women whose minds are sufficiently broad to hold other
ideals than the matrimonial one find other work to do, and do it capably
and faithfully. Loving and sympathetic women are always wanted. Marriage
is not essential to such a woman's life, though it may be to the highest
development of her happiness.
Again, the large number of women who have had chances of marrying can
comfort themselves that they chose to be single for their ideal's
sake--or for whatever the reason was. Larger still is the number of
those possessing the non-marrying temperament of which Bernard Shaw has
written: 'Barren--the Life-Force passes it by.' This rarely troubles
them; they have a host of minor pleasures and interests which suffice;
no storms of feeling, no pangs of stifled mother-longing ruffle the
placid surface of their lives. The real tragedy of the undesired does
not touch either of these classes; it is reserved in all its poignancy
for those who belong to the type of the _grande amoureuse_, whom lack of
opportunity generally, lack of attractiveness sometimes, has prevented
from fulfilling the deepest need of their nature.
I once met at a hotel on the Riviera an elderly spinster who was always
incredibly depressed. However bravely shone the sun, however fair seemed
the world in that fairest spot, nothing had the power to cheer her.
I tried once to get her to join in an excursion which a party of us were
going to make on donkey-back to a neighbouring village in the hills, but
she refused. Another time I invited her to accompany me to the rooms at
Monte Carlo, but she again refused, and after several well-meant efforts
on my part to cheer her had led to the same result, the poor soul told
me in hesitating words that she shunned gay places and lively
gatherings. 'They always make me discontented and remind me of what I
might have had; it brings home to me the--what shall I call it?--the
_tragedy of the might-have-been_.' I understood what she meant, and no
further words on the subject passed between us, much to my relief, as
confidences of this nature are very painful to both sides. My readers
will probably despise this poor lady as morbid, selfish and unbalanced.
Possibly they are right, but the sadness of an empty heart, a lonely
life, was the cause of her warped nature. Fortunately hers is an extreme
case; the majority of spinsters I imagine can take a delight in seeing
girls happy, and are generally deeply interested in the love affairs of
others. I recall a beautiful line of Fiona Macleod's to the effect that
'a secret vision in the soul will hallow life.' This will suffice to
keep many spinsters happy--the memory of some love and tenderness,
a romance of some kind to sweeten life; women need it.
To give another instance: a woman once asked me why men fell in love.
'I wonder if you can tell me what it is about women that makes men
propose to them,' she said. 'I've known numbers of plain women married
and numbers of penniless ones, and some quite horrid ones without a
single quality likely to make a man happy, yet there must have been
_something_ about them that attracted--some reason for it.'
She went on to tell me in such a pathetic way how she longed to have a
home and a 'nice, kind man,' to care for her, and yet no man had ever
asked her; no man had ever desired her or looked on her with love; she
had never known the clasp of a man's passionate arms, nor the ecstasy of
a lover's kiss. It seemed very strange to me, strangely painful and
horribly humiliating. I could scarcely bear to look at her while she
told me these things.
'I would make a man so happy,' she said, and her mournful dark eyes
filled with tears; she had rather fine eyes, and was quite a
nice-looking woman with a most sweet and gentle manner. 'I would be so
good to him,' she went on; 'I'd simply live for him. I try to put it out
of my mind, but as I grow older, and it's more hopeless, I think of it
more and more and sometimes I feel I shall go mad with the misery of it.
The future is so utterly grey and it's all so unjust. I'm so fitted for
love, and now my life's going and I've had nothing, _nothing_!'
She wept bitterly and I wept too in sympathy with her. Curiously enough,
this woman was not only attractive, as I have said, and anxious to
please, and thoroughly feminine, but she had had ample opportunities of
meeting men. I suppose she lacked what the Scotch peasant-woman called
the '_come hither in the 'ee_'--some subtle sex-magnetism which had been
possessed by those 'plain, penniless, and horrid women' whom she talked
about. Or perhaps it was that the 'will to live' was absent and
therefore no mate came to the woman.
There are thousands of women who feel the same, though in most cases
they would scorn to own it. We hear a good deal of man's right to live;
what about woman's right to love? Women are so constituted that the need
for loving and being loved is the strongest factor of their being, the
essential of their existence. All over the country there are lonely
women of every class, leisured and working women, pretty and plain, good
and bad, who are hungering and thirsting for love, for a man to take
care of them, for the right to wifehood and the thrice blessed right to
motherhood. In the Press the parrot cry of men echoes ceaselessly:
'Women shouldn't meddle in politics; women shouldn't do this or
that--let them mind their homes and their children.' But the restless
women who do these things have generally no homes or children to mind;
what is the use of preaching the sacredness of motherhood when you will
not allow them to be mothers? To what end prate of the duties of
wifehood when you do not ask them to be wives?
It is a well-known physiological fact that numbers of women become
insane in middle life who would not have done so if they had enjoyed the
ordinary duties, pleasures and preoccupations of matrimony--if their
women's natures had not been starved by an unnatural celibacy. This is
not a suitable subject to go into here, but I recommend it to the
attention of my more thoughtful readers and those who concern themselves
with the amelioration of the wretched social conditions of our glorious
twentieth-century civilisation.
Hardest of all is the case of the woman who longs not merely for
wifehood and 'a kind man,' but more especially for motherhood, the
bitter-sweet crown of the sex that celibate priests preach ceaselessly
as woman's first duty and highest good, but which thousands of women in
this country are debarred from fulfilling! Surely no bitterness must
be so poignant as the bitterness of the woman who longs for
motherhood--ceaselessly in her ears the Life Force is calling, and deep
in her heart the dream children are stirring, crying, 'Give us life!
give us life!' becoming more importunate every year, as each year finds
the divine possibilities unrealised.
I often think how everything combines to torment a generous-hearted,
full-blooded, mother-woman whose nature is starved thus. She has, of
course, to suppress all emotion on the subject, to hold her head high,
and endure with a smile the 'experienced' airs of girls, much younger
than herself, who happen to wear that magical golden ring that changes
all life for a woman; to pretend generally that she has no wish to
marry, never had, and could have if she chose, to laugh at this page if
she should happen to read it, and call the writer a morbid idiot--in
short, she always has to act a part before a world which professes to
find exquisitely humorous the fact of a woman being cheated out of the
birthright of her sex. Every paper and book she picks up nowadays
contains some reference to the glories of motherhood, the joys of love.
Music, pictures, novels and plays, all speak of sex fulfilled and
triumphant, not starved and denied like hers. The same principle is
everywhere in Nature--the sky, the sea, the flowers, the green trees,
the sound of summer rain--all beautiful sights and sounds have the same
meaning, the same burden, the same sharp sting for her. If she is
inclined to be morbid, every child's face seen in the street turns the
knife in the wound; every sweet baby's cooing is another pang. 'Not for
me--not for me!' must be the perpetual refrain in her mind. Her arms are
empty, her heart is cold; she belongs to the vast, sad army of the
undesired.
_Do you wonder the madhouses are full of single women?_
* * *
NOTE.--A clever and delightful friend of mine, a spinster by choice,
takes exception to my views on the single estate. I should be deeply
grieved if any words of mine were to cause pain to other women. I have
said before that some of the best women are spinsters, which is sad to a
believer in marriage like myself. Two of the sweetest and noblest women
I know are unmarried; one of them especially seems absolutely without a
thought of self, and has worked hard for others all her life, giving her
powers of brain and body to their utmost limit, and the treasures of her
beautiful heart generously and without stint. I beg my readers to note
that I have tried to differentiate between those spinsters who do not
want to marry and those who do; between the rich spinster who can
command all the amenities of life, and the poor one compelled to a
relentless and unceasing round of uncongenial toil. Still more do I wish
to distinguish between the placid contented woman who can adapt herself
to circumstances and find a quiet sort of happiness in any life--and the
less well-balanced, more passionate natures, with deeper desires and an
imperious need of loving. It is this need of loving stifled, crushed and
fought against that awakens my profound compassion--a compassion which
my friend informs me is wasted and misplaced. My readers must judge.