AGE AND HEALTH.
If a man were only a generating animal, the problem of age in marriage
would be very simple, and reducible to this formula: That as long as
men or women can relight the flame of life they are _marriageable_.
That means that a man may marry from sixteen to sixty, and in
exceptional cases up to seventy and eighty; and that he may marry a
woman of from fifteen to forty-five.
Man, however, is not solely a generating animal, but a thinking,
reasoning, sentient, cavilling, wrangling being; a political,
commercial, and religious creature; he manufactures brakes to curb
the exhilaration of the gallop downhill, creates sophisms to spoil
truth, and crutches to make athletes rickety; he tells many lies for
amusement; in short he is the most clever and ingenious artificer in
things of which he knows very little, in the whole planetary universe.
Notwithstanding all these precious virtues, man finds the problem of
age most complicated, when he wishes to take one of the daughters of
Eve and say to her: “_Will you give me your hand, so that we may form
a little future for ourselves?_”
All other elements being favourable, the ideal perfection in age as
regards marriage would be as follows:
The man to be from twenty-five to thirty-five.
The woman from eighteen to twenty-five.
The man should always be a few years older than the woman, that is
from five to ten years older, and this for many reasons. Man grows
older more slowly than woman, and keeps his power of reproduction
longer.
Before twenty-five or thirty years of age a man, unless he be a born
libertine, knows comparatively little of the world of woman, and that
only the worst, and in his choice of a wife may make a terrible
mistake.
Then, also, the products of a too early union are weak and inferior;
the statistics of all countries show that there are more deaths among
children of young parents than of older, or if they live, they are
more weakly.
In the most simple problems of marriage, as in the most complex
and metaphysical, it is always better to remember the fundamental
doctrine, that harmony and happiness are founded on the agreement of
two very different instruments, which ought always to accord with
each other. We should pay attention, then, to false notes! If in an
orchestra two instruments do not strike the right notes, or if one
goes too fast and the other too slow, it is a very small matter, and
ends in a grimace upon the brow of the few who understand music.
But in marriage the slight discord is a wound in the heart of two
beings, who had joined hands for a happy life; and there is always a
cicatrix left, which, like the wounds of veterans, acts as a barometer
to the least change of temperature, of moisture, or of an atmosphere
charged with electricity. The restless hand seeks to stop the sharp
irritation, and lacerates the cicatrix, changing it to a chronic sore,
which is always painful, but never healed.
Oh, men! oh, women, study counterpoint, the harmony and melody of
the heart, body, and soul, day and night, if you wish to gather the
blessed and perfumed rose of married happiness, in the garden of life.
⁂
Beyond the ideal perfection of number represented by the beautiful
figure of two flowering and fragrant young lives, you may have all
these possible combinations, which, with a _crescendo_ of perils and
accidents, render the accordance of hearts and bodies always more
difficult:
_Two beings equally mature in age._
_Two old people._
_A mature or old man and a young woman._
_A young man and a middle-aged or old woman._
We see all these combinations pass daily beyond our eyes, paired
according to one or the other of these arithmetical formulæ—formulæ in
which numbers weigh and govern human happiness with so tremendous an
influence.
Let us study them one by one.
⁂
_Man adult—woman adult_:
This is one of the most favorable combinations, the freest from danger
and painful discovery. If it be true that for this combination there
is rarer access to the Olympus of ardent love, it is also true that
shipwreck and cataclysm are rarer also. The navigation is nearly
always on a tranquil lake, in a _safe_ boat, under the guidance of
that best of helmsmen, good sense.
The majority of such cases consists of old attachments interrupted
by unsurmountable obstacles, favoured again by some fortunate
circumstance. The two who had loved and hoped for each other in their
youth, find themselves free and their own masters, and all at once, at
a single glance, have called up from the depths a bright panorama of
fond visions, which for some time seemed to have disappeared in that
abyss which buries and consumes all.
_Do you remember, dear?_
_Yes, indeed I do!_ I seem to see you still at your window on that
Sunday, when, after looking at me so long, you threw me a kiss across
the street, when I believed I was hidden by the convolvulus on my
balcony.
Ah, yes, yes; that kiss was the beginning of a long idyl which I seem
to see rising from the mists of the past as though by enchantment————
And from remembrance to remembrance a living and speaking world
appears before those two once more, but more beautiful and more
rose-coloured in semblance than it was in reality; enlarged by fancy,
the first of artists, gilded by distant reminiscence, which is ever
optimist.
The old couple have some wrinkles on their faces and some threads of
silver in their hair, but they see each other as they were twenty
years ago; and if desires are indolent, and the clasp of the hands
does not set the heart beating; if at night ardent dreams no longer
disturb the peace of the passions, an odour of loving friendship
surrounds them and binds them closer to each other day by day, and
grows hourly more like love and less like friendship. They have so
many remembrances in common. They have twenty years of life to recount
to each other, and relating the sad and joyful events they alternately
recount their recollections as though they had in reality lived
together all the while, so that mine becomes thine and then ours,
and without declaration or trepidation the happy day arrives when,
without any necessity of finishing the phrase or dotting the _i_,
the two right hands find themselves clasped together, the lips join
between a sigh that questions and one that answers:
_Really you wish————?_
_And why not?_
And the _why not_ becomes _because I do_ on the morrow, and the man
and woman become husband and wife; and almost without agitation,
without accident, they reach in safety the port of sure and tranquil
happiness.
I recall two such marriages with emotion, those of Stuart Mill and
Hillebrandt.
To these serene and tranquil unions children are not necessary, but
if they come they brighten and bless the house, bringing with them a
nosegay of flowers and an odour of spring which makes those two happy
mortals young once more.
⁂
_Two old people._
Add some ten years to the arithmetical combination just studied and
you will have a lower temperature, but still less danger to the
happiness of the two beings who, defying ridicule and prejudice, wish
to consecrate an old friendship upon the _altar_ of matrimony.
I do not say altar as a matter of phraseology, nor to do homage to the
religious ceremony of marriage, but because I am deeply convinced
that if there be nothing beyond the union of bodies or association of
capital marriage is a sacrilege. The troth of two should always be
plighted on an altar, whether it be that of Christ or of some ideal,
of Moses or Mahomet, of poetry or religion.
Old people only marry once, either to win legitimacy for an old
contraband love, or to give a legal status to the children. They are
marriages of reparation, corrections of proof-sheets set aside for
many years and forgotten. They merit our approbation and belong to
those good actions of which Christ speaks, which, if done at the last
hour, make death less hard and allow us to die at peace and at rest
with the faith, which illuminates our souls and prepares us to start
in the train that bears us to eternal silence, or to the golden gates
of the Christian paradise.
In the marriage of two old people who love each other, love is no
intoxicating flower, but a friendship slightly gilded by sexual
sympathy, which endures longer than the reproductive function even as
it precedes it.
⁂
_A middle-aged man and a young woman_: If theory, hygiene, logical
concords, and compacts proclaim the truth—which has all the force
of a dogma—that an old man ought not to marry a young woman, daily
practice shows us that all these combinations are possible:
40 ♀ + 20 ♂
50 ♀ + 18 ♂
60 ♀ + 30 ♂
60 ♀ + 15 ♂
70 ♀ + 30 ♂
70 ♀ + 20 ♂
80 ♀ + 40 ♂
80 ♀ + 30 ♂
80 ♀ + 15 or 18 ♂
All formulæ, cold and precise as the numbers that make them up, but
full of a terrible crescendo of precipices and cataclysms! They arouse
before us the phantom of a perfect pandemonium, and show us the
horrors of a hell more dreadful than that of Dante.
How many tears, how much blood, bathe the path which divides those
figures! What deep and hidden hatred, how much revenge premeditated
during the night and put into practice in the clear light of day; how
many deceptions planned with the cruelty of art; what repentance,
crimes, intrigues, bitterness of soul; how many tortures and struggles
are written between those silent and lifeless figures? Yet, still, you
will find the rarest, most complete, and perfect happiness lying close
to this hell, like an oasis in the midst of a desert.
For example, there are marriages of which the formula is 60 + 30, and
even 50 + 18, that are real Edens of delight, where neither the most
lovely and fragrant flowers of spring-time, nor the sweet tendernesses
of voluptuousness, illimitable prospects, painless sighs,
conversation without words, nor all indescribable delights, are
wanting; and where you have also the charm that belongs to difficulty,
and all the fascination which surrounds things sacred.
But why among these mute and dead numbers do we find the extremes of
human misery and blessedness? Why do we see the most noble sacrifices
and meannesses, the most ignoble baseness and the highest ideality,
bound together, with a cruel irony, by a malignant fate; why do we
see angels and demons dancing together as though enchanted by some
fantastic waltz?
For a very simple reason.
Because the happiness of marriage between an old man and a young
woman is nothing but an unstable and difficult balance granted to few.
But to those who are capable of feeling it, it brings the sublime
giddiness of the great heights. Everyone walks, but few take the leap
to death. All climb the hills; exceedingly few have stood on the
top of Mont Blanc. But those who do not break their necks, nor fall
into the crevasses, experience, as they mount the highest and most
difficult summit of the Alps, strong and fascinating emotions which
make them proud and glad. All problems of life, whether great or small
or indifferent, always have this dilemma hidden within them:
_To dare or not to dare._
The Rubicon is either an historical fact, a myth, or a romance.
I leave it to historians to decide; but every practical problem of
happiness has its rubicon, at which the whole world pauses.
Some turn back.
Some leap over it.
The most of them remain still on the bank all their lives, looking at
the other side and scratching their heads. After forty years of age
bachelors or widows stand before the rubicon of marriage and say:
_Shall I go over or not?_
The larger number wait so long to decide that the forty years become
fifty and then sixty. The limbs become weaker and the river grows
wider by the inundations and floods of so many autumns, and thus the
problem is resolved by want of resolution.
Others instead, after a short and earnest meditation, exclaim:
_No, I will not leap it._
And both do well, because although the calculation of probabilities
is rarely applicable to moral problems, yet it proves that the
combination of an old man and a young woman is a very frail one; at
the least shock it is separated, as with fulminant mercury, chloride
of azote, and all the infinite array of explosives; then comes a
detonation, a disaster, more often a putrid and fetid dissolution.
Some do not scratch their heads, but decide resolutely on the great
step and leap.
A difficult and perilous leap in which but few reach the other side
unscathed. The majority of these intrepid individuals fall into the
middle of the stream, which carries them away in its turbid and rough
waters; others plunge directly into the mud up to the body and are
fixed there, without being able to get out, a ridicule to others, a
desperation to themselves.
⁂
In that garden of Gethsemane, where all men drink of the cup of doubt,
in that garden of perplexity which we ought to leave with a _yes_ or
_no_ and turn to the right or left, knowing that one path leads to
happiness, the other to desperation, without knowing, however, which
of the two ways leads whither; in that garden, I say, my little
book ought to serve as a guide to resolve one of the most difficult
problems of marriage.
And I, who have arrogated to myself this right of counsel, will tell
with a loud voice those who do care for my advice, my fundamental and
organic precept on which all the other minor points must rest.
Marriage between an old man and a young woman may lead to happiness,
if inspired on both sides by love.
Less surely will it lead to the same end if the love that leads them
to the altar is all on one side.
It nearly always leads to unhappiness and ruin if the man is induced
by sensuality, or the woman by the desire of riches or by ambition.
And as this third case is the most common, I will explain at once why
those terrible arithmetical combinations are so fruitful in domestic
misery, adultery, and let us say crime, including those which the code
does not regard.
⁂
At this point I see a malicious reader smiling, and hear him say that
I ought to be classed among those madmen and deceivers who think they
have solved the problem of squaring the circle or of perpetual motion.
You tell me a marriage between an old man and a young woman may be
happy, provided there be love on both sides. But this is an impudent
joke. You may assure me with equal seriousness that I can catch a
sparrow if I put salt upon its tail. How, when, and where can a young
woman, fragrant of spring, who seeks with eyes, mouth, nostrils, with
all senses, the pollen which will fructify her and make her a mother;
how can she desire or love a man who is already on the decline of
life and can offer his companion nothing but lasciviousness framed by
rheumatism, catarrh, dyspepsia, and cough?
No, malicious reader, I do not joke; neither have I endeavoured to
solve insoluble problems. I sincerely believe a young woman can love
an old man, but he must still be a man and handsome; for robust,
flourishing, and cheerful old age has a beauty of its own, and if
much is wanting it has the greatest resources and a certain delicate
virtue, too, which a young man does not possess.
Love, too, has so many and such different forms, and is composed of
so many different elements, that it can vibrate and burn even in the
gray-headed.
The last love of Goethe speaks of all these; and the many warm and
enduring passions awakened in young women by men eminent in politics,
arts, letters, and science join in the chorus.
If in these loves the ardour of the senses fails—and it must fail—we
find much veneration, tenderness, and often a sweet compassion, a
sentiment that always predominates in the female breast.
Young men are often bad husbands because they assume too much; they
pretend that love should be laid at their feet, as a tribute due to
their beauty and transcendent vigour. They claim that they have the
right to be loved for themselves, even when they on their side fulfil
none of their duties.
The old man, on the contrary, feels his own weakness and implores
love as a favour, and responds to it with a warm and inexhaustible
gratitude every hour and every minute. He knows that little is due to
him, and contents himself with a smile, a kiss, or a caress, which
he doubles and centriples with his unfailing gratitude. He guards
his love as a treasure, which may be taken from him from one moment
to another; he defends it with all his strength, encloses it in a
tabernacle, and adores it as a god. His companion, therefore, has
always the peaceful surety that she will not be betrayed by other
women.
⁂
That these unions may be blessed by happiness, the husband and
wife, above all things, must be _gentle-people_; that is persons of
honour, who frankly accept the compact sworn to, without reticence or
subterfuge.
Before the old man utters the tremendous _yes_ he ought to present
his account, even increasing the credit and diminishing the debit;
explain himself clearly and dot every _i_. Therefore I entreat you
when you make your _fiancée_ acquainted with your financial position,
be careful that each _i_ has its dot, aye, even two.
⁂
Such marriages as we are studying are far more frequent than we should
at first suppose, and the fortunate cases are also less rare than
the theory would lead us to believe; because women are far greater
idealists in love than we are, and whilst we chiefly seek beauty and
carnal gratification, they seek other things of a superior order,
which they appease with the heart of the artist, and the phantasy of
the poet. The love of a man for an illustrious but ugly woman is a
phenomenon rarer than a white fly. The love of a young woman for a
great, but gray-headed man is tolerably common, and is sufficient to
do honour to the female sex.
But a man of mature age has other things besides to offer a young
woman: riches, a high social position, many ambitions he can satisfy;
and he has a whole world of high, good, and pleasant things to lay at
the foot of the woman, and can say to her: All this for a little love!
I, of course, understand that these are international exchanges,
which are far removed from love, and approach more nearly to commerce;
but the sacred books have often used the words _carnal commerce_
without blushing, and why can there not be a little commerce in
matrimony? Provided the balance does not incline too much to one side,
and there is no deceit—in a word provided the one who weighs be a
gentleman—such marriages may be happy, too.
⁂
When a man marries a woman very much younger than himself, people
smile maliciously and point their fingers as if to ward off the evil
eye, and to show the daring individual that the _Minotaur_ awaits
him. In this case the populace cuts not one, but a hundred gordian
knots with a brutal and bestial sword.
Adultery is a plant that grows in every clime, but more especially
where a woman fails in esteem for her companion, and the clever sower
and cultivator of these plants is always the husband.
I am so convinced of this truth, that if statistics of adultery were
possible, I am certain I should find the greatest number amongst the
unions of young people: for they also make contracts of buying and
selling, of exchange of titles and dollars, in their marriages.
If you, with your white hairs, have the courage to marry a young
woman, study her character most of all. If she be a thorough lady
in education she will be less likely to betray you than if you were
young; for she is proud of herself and would not willingly commit a
sin toward which the world would be so indulgent; for women also like
difficult things, heroic undertakings; because they like to say in
their own hearts or throw in the face of their seducer the sublime
motto: _noblesse oblige_.
⁂
Then in conclusion:
If, with your white hairs, you have the courage to bind your life to
blond or brown tresses fragrant with youthfulness, place yourself
naked before the mirror in your chamber and look at yourself for some
time. Then for a longer time put yourself before that other mirror of
conscience which reflects us so inexorably; and, having balanced the
accounts of your physical _I_ and your moral and intellectual _me_,
see if you are still a possible man, a handsome and strong man; and
if you find yourself a young woman who is more an angel than a woman,
more woman than female, offer her your hand without too many scruples
or false reticences, and who knows but that when you die, you may then
be able to say: “The last years of my life have been my happiest. In
my youth I knew a hundred women, in my old age I have only known one;
and she alone was worth the other hundred. Woman is the benediction
_of life_.”
⁂
_A young man and old woman_:
Amongst the discordances of age between husband and wife, none
astonish us so much, or I ought to say disgust us more, than when an
old woman marries a young man.
There is the kernel of a great truth at the root of this scorn, which
springs from the very heart of nature.
A man may be a man even at eighty years of age; and I cannot resist
smiling when I remember a lady who complained of the exactions of her
companion, a man over seventy. We all remember Fontenelle and the
Duke of Richelieu, in whom virility was only extinguished with life:
in the first case the life lasting for a century, in the second for
more than eighty years.
A woman, on the contrary, after forty-five, or at the most after fifty
years of age, is no longer a woman, and the reproductive faculty is
entirely destroyed. Hence the marriage of a young man and old woman
is more contrary to the laws of nature than that of an old man and
a young woman. The one may be fruitful, the other never. Add to the
æsthetic exigencies of the man the rapid decadence of the woman after
the change of life, and you will understand that the union we are
discussing is one of the most repugnant and repulsive. The motives
which bring such a man and such a woman together are nearly always
the most abject, and amongst those that offend the moral sense the
most. On one side carnal gratification; on the other the thirst for
gold; hence, prostitution on the part of the man, the most filthy
and disgusting in the commerce of love. The man sells his youth, his
virility, in exchange for money; and the woman who no longer has a
right to love, buys it as a merchandise, and is satisfied with the
voluptuousness given her by one whom she ought to be the first to
despise! A market of lasciviousness and vileness, gold gathered from
the mud—a mud, however, which cannot be washed off, and which soils
hand, conscience, everything it touches.
However, for the honour of humanity, such unions are exceedingly
rare: those who buy and sell and are satisfied with a clandestine
concubinage, hide the sin in the deep folds of our modern hypocrisy.
_Maintained, yes; a husband, no!_
A woman, on the contrary, always desires marriage, because she has the
pride of proclaiming to all the world, that, notwithstanding her many
years and innumerable wrinkles, the wreck of her form which assails
her on all sides, she has known how to find a companion at bed and
board, who makes her happy.
Man, on the contrary, hides himself on account of the modesty which
is never wanting, even in the vilest delinquents; and hiding his shame
in the darkness of a clandestine concubinage, hopes to preserve the
esteem of men, and the gold he has gained with that reddened face of
his. I will persist no longer on this theme because I hope that no
young husbands of old women will ever read my book—they would soil it
too much with their filthy hands—and because I have a great hope that
they are all illiterate.
⁂
However, before leaving this lurid argument, I ought to say, for
the love of truth, that ancient and modern history register some
exceedingly rare cases of union between old women and young men, in
which neither the desires of the flesh nor the thirst for gold entered
at all; they treat of intellectual unions in which the concord of
souls, the sympathy of hearts and thoughts, the harmony of taste, the
affinity of humane propositions, most charmingly unite two persons
whom the difference in age would generally divide.
Love is the greatest and most powerful worker of miracles, it is
the thaumaturgus of thaumaturgists, and I in the small circle of my
experiences know a young man, who has never been able to desire or
love a young woman, but adores old women; and if he does not marry
any of his venerable friends, it is from fear of ridicule. It is true
that in this case we treat of an aberration of sexual instinct to
be classed with sodomy and incest; but this _pathological nomad_ is
seated in an otherwise normal and perfect brain.
Intellectual unions on the other hand are physiological facts which
offend no rights of nature, and ought to be respected and studied, as
rare, but most noble phenomena of the human heart.
With regard to the health of those desiring to take a wife, and
the health of our companion, I will recommend to them my _Elementi
d’igiene_, and more especially _Igiene d’amore_, where I have fully
treated this vital side of the great problem.