MARIE CORELLI’S VIEWS ON MARRIAGE
Marie Corelli seems to think that the present generation is one in which
hypocrisy cumbers the face of the globe. “Never,” she says, “was the
earth so oppressed with the weight of polite lying, never were there
such crowds of evil masqueraders, cultured tricksters, and social
humbugs, who, though admirable as tricksters and humbugs, are wholly
contemptible as men and women. Truth is at a discount, and if one should
utter it the reproachful faces of one’s so-called ‘friends’ show how
shocked they are at meeting with anything honest.” That is a very
sweeping assertion for which Marie Corelli has been abused. If the world
had in it more sincerity than sham, the truth of her condemnation of
present systems and practices would have been frankly admitted. Because
what she says is true to an unhappy degree. The authoress is severe in
her criticisms of the marriage “bargains” which are, we think, mainly
the possession of what she would call “smart” society. The Divorce
Court record is certainly a proof that a good many of the weddings that
are “arranged” are certainly not made in Heaven. Marie Corelli thinks,
indeed, that many women have forgotten what marriage is, and she
declares it to be an absolute grim fact that in England many women of
the upper classes are not to-day married, but merely bought for a price.
“Marriage is not the church, the ritual, the blessing of clergymen,
or the ratifying and approving presence of one’s friends and
relations at the ceremony; still less is it a matter of settlements
and expensive millinery. It is the taking of a solemn vow before
the throne of the Eternal--a vow which declares that the man and
woman concerned have discovered in each other his or her true mate;
that they feel life is alone valuable and worth living in each
other’s company; that they are prepared to endure trouble, poverty,
pain, sickness, death itself, provided that they may only be
together; and that all the world is a mere grain of dust in worth
as compared to the exalted passion which fills their souls and
moves them to become one in flesh as well as in spirit. Nothing can
make marriage an absolutely sacred thing except the great love,
combined with the pure and faithful intention of the vow involved.”
Amongst all classes a very large number of marriages mean all that.
Amongst the poorer classes--not the lowest classes--the proportion is
probably the largest, and amongst the middle and higher classes it is
so to a large though diminishing degree. Nevertheless, Marie Corelli
states, and we agree, that it is the cash-box that governs the actions
of far too many in entering upon the most serious duty of life; and if
the man and wife do not realize the importance and sacredness of the
tie, the result must be, as the novelist says, that the man and wife
will drag down rather than uplift each other.
In a magazine article which Marie Corelli wrote some time ago, she drew
a delightful picture of an artist and his wife in Capri who live on £100
a year in perfect bliss. When one views the picture she draws of their
life it is easy to think one has found something like the lost paradise.
Still, if we all tried love on £100 a year in Capri the housing problem
would soon become as serious a matter there as it is to-day in our great
cities. Love on £100 a year, or less or more, must be tried by most of
us under less favorable geographical circumstances; but under whatever
circumstances true it is, as Miss Corelli insists, that God’s law of
love will make of marriage a successful and happy undertaking.
Marriage on very moderate means is not attractive. And why? According to
Marie Corelli, because Love is not sufficient for the average girl;
because in the rush of our time we are trampling sweet emotions and true
passion under foot, marriages being too seldom the result of affection
nowadays. They are too often merely the carrying out of a settled scheme
of business. Mothers teach their daughters to marry for a “suitable
establishment”; fathers, rendered desperate as to what they are to do
with their sons in the increasing struggle for life and the incessant
demand for luxuries which are not by any means actually necessary to
that life, say: “Look out for a woman with money.” The heir to a great
name and title sells his birthright for a mess of American
dollar-pottage;--and it is a very common, every-day business to see some
Christian virgin sacrificed on the altar of matrimony to a
money-lending, money-grubbing son of Israel. Bargain and sale,--sale and
bargain,--it is the whole _raison d’être_ of the “season,”--the balls,
the dinners, the suppers, the parties to Hurlingham and Ascot,--even on
the dear old Thames, with its delicious nooks fitted for pure romance
and heart betrothal, the clatter of Gunter’s luncheon-dishes and the
popping of Benoist’s champagne-corks remind the hungry gypsies who
linger near such scenes of river revelry that there is not much
sentiment about,--only plenty of money being wasted. Marie Corelli well
says that there can be nothing more hideous--more like a foretaste of
hell itself--than the life position of a man and woman who have been
hustled into matrimony, and who, when the wedding fuss is over and the
feminine pictorial papers have done gushing about the millinery of the
occasion, find themselves alone together, without a single sympathy in
common, with nothing but the chink of gold and the rustle of the
bank-notes for their heart music, and with a barrier of steadily
increasing repulsion and disgust rising between them every day.
We have seen something of such a picture in Marie Corelli’s character of
“Sybil Elton”; that it is no more nor less than a crime to enter upon
marriage without that mutual supreme attraction and deep love which
makes the union sacred, may be, in fact, allowed. The question is, how
to avoid such evils? Marie Corelli gives the answer in this advice: “In
a woman’s life _one_ love should suffice. She cannot, constituted as she
is, honestly give herself to more than one man. And she should be
certain--absolutely, sacredly, solemnly certain, that one man is indeed
her preelected lover, her chosen mate; that never could she care for any
other hand than his to caress her beauty, never for any other kiss than
his to rest upon her lips, and that without him life is but a
half-circle waiting completion.... Love is the last of all the mythical
gods to be tempted or cajolled by lawyers and settlements, wedding-cake,
and perishable millinery. His domain is nature and the heart of
humanity,--and the gifts he can bestow on those who meet him in the true
spirit are marvelous and priceless indeed. The exquisite joys he can
teach,--the fine sympathies,--the delicate emotions,--the singular
method in which he will play upon two lives like separate harps, and
bring them into resounding tune and harmony, so that all the world shall
seem full of luscious song,--this is one way of Love’s system of
education. But this is not all--he can so mould the character, temper
the will, and strengthen the heart, as to make his elected disciples
endure the bitterest sorrows bravely,--perform acts of heroic
self-sacrifice and attain the most glorious heights of ambition,--for,
as the venerable Thomas à Kempis tells us,--‘Love is a great thing, yes,
a great and thorough good; by itself it makes everything that is heavy,
light--and it bears evenly all that is uneven. For it carries a burden
which is no burden, and makes everything that is bitter sweet and
tasteful. Though weary it is not tired,--though pressed it is not
straightened,--though alarmed it is not confounded, but as a lively
flame and burning torch it forces its way upward and securely passes
through all. Is not such divine happiness well worth attaining?’”
The answer to that rests with the women mainly, and to them Marie
Corelli says:
“I want you to refuse to make your bodies and souls the
traffickable material of vulgar huckstering,--I want you to _give_
yourselves, ungrudgingly, fearlessly, without a price or any
condition whatsoever, to the men you truly love, and abide by the
results. If love is love indeed, no regret can be possible. But be
sure it _is_ love,--the real passion, that elevates you above all
sordid and mean considerations of self,--that exalts you to noble
thoughts and nobler deeds,--that keeps you faithful to the one vow,
and moves you to take a glorious pride in preserving that vow’s
immaculate purity,--be sure it is all this,--for if it is not all
this you are making a mistake and you are ignorant of the very
beginnings of love. Try to fathom your own hearts on this vital
question--try to feel, to comprehend, to learn the responsibilities
invested in womanhood, and never stand before God’s altar to accept
a blessing on your marriage if you know in your inmost soul that it
is no marriage at all in the true sense of the word, but merely a
question of convenience and sale. To do such a deed is the vilest
blasphemy,--a blasphemy in which you involve the very priest who
pronounces the futile benediction. The saying ‘God will not be
mocked’ is a true one; and least of all will He consent to listen
to or ratify such a mockery as a marriage-vow sworn before Him in
utter falsification and misprisal of His chiefest
commandment,--Love. It is a wicked and wilful breaking of the
law,--and is never by any chance suffered to remain unpunished.”
Marie Corelli is a great friend of children, loving them and beloved of
them. It may be regarded as probable that the children of those who form
the ideal unions which the novelist so eloquently describes will be sure
to train their own offspring on good and intelligent lines. But there
are others--so many of them. There is much in the writings of Marie
Corelli that bears upon the question, and her text is the dedication of
the “Mighty Atom”--“To those self-styled ‘Progressivists’ who by precept
and example assist the infamous cause of education without religion, and
who, by promoting the idea, borrowed from French atheism, of denying to
the children in Board schools and elsewhere, the knowledge and love of
God, as the true foundation of noble living, are guilty of a worse crime
than murder.” That is her view. She regards the teaching of simple
Christian truths--the love of God, and the instruction which is the
basis of all Christian creeds, _i. e._, to do unto others as you would
be done by--as an essential element in the education of children. She
would regard it as the most heinous of crimes to take from our English
elementary schools that religious instruction which was agreed to in the
1870 Compromise, the Compromise which happily has survived a violent
attack made upon it not long since in the elementary educational
Parliament of London, the Metropolitan School Board.
Whatever be the general scheme of elementary, secondary, higher, and
technical education and training, Marie Corelli would have the people
insist, as for life itself, upon the children being taught “the
knowledge and love of God.”
She would have that knowledge imparted in the spirit of which Queen
Victoria wrote: “I am quite clear,” said the Queen, speaking of her
eldest daughter, then a child, “that she should be taught to have great
reverence for God and for religion, and that she should have the feeling
of devotion and love which our Heavenly Father encourages His earthly
children to have for Him, and not one of fear and trembling.” In “The
Master Christian” we see incidentally brought out the evil results of
the unhappy law of France which excludes religious education from the
schools, the consequence of which is the enormous increase of agnostic
thought in that country, and, built upon it, the views and practices
which are eating into the heart of that great nation like a foul
disease, weakening its numerical strength and its moral and intellectual
force. For the guidance of parents in this matter we would commend them
to those two most interesting books, “The Mighty Atom” and “Boy.” They
are volumes which all parents should read and study. They have already
given pause to many callous men and women who were neglecting to bestow
that thought on the children’s training which the subject demands. There
are many Christian parents who for want of thought neglect this matter
and sometimes have only themselves to thank for dissolute sons and
impure daughters. On the other hand, to their credit it is the fact that
many who are not Christians, who are careless and neglectful of
religion, or are even agnostics, insist upon their children receiving
that religious education which they themselves once received, with the
just and broad-minded idea that, though they have become careless,
cynical, or entirely agnostic, the children shall start as they did with
the same training and have the same opportunity of forming their own
judgment on these matters.
Parents will think deeply over “The Mighty Atom” and “Boy.” Different as
the two stories are, they deal essentially with this great question.
They both teach serious lessons to the fathers and the mothers of
English boyhood. The stories, as such, have been already dealt with.
Here we will just give a few of those lessons which it is the object of
the works in question to teach.
The author would have children’s bodies educated as well as their minds.
She regards the former as the more important for the reason that a
healthy body is the most suitable habitation for a healthy mind, and
that a keen intellect developed by ruining the physical strength is not
calculated to benefit either the individual, or the community to which
the individual belongs. Lionel Valliscourt, the little hero of “The
Mighty Atom,” has a father and also a tutor, one Montrose. The father is
an atheist and anxious to educate the son on a system, part of which is
the exclusion of religion from the curriculum. Montrose, a level-headed,
clear-brained Scotchman,--no “preacher,” but possessing a simple belief
in God--is dismissed from his position because he does not approve the
father’s system. This he describes as child-murder; and in the remarks
he addresses to the father at their last interview Marie Corelli’s
opinions about child-training are indicated:
“I will have no part in child-murder” (says Montrose), ...
“Child-murder! Take the phrase and think it over! You have only one
child,--a boy of a most lovable and intelligent
disposition,--quick-brained, too quick-brained by half!--You are
killing him with your hard and fast rules, and your pernicious
‘system’ of intellectual training. You deprive him of such pastimes
as are necessary to his health and growth,--you surround him with
petty tyrannies which make his young life a martyrdom,--you give
him no companions of his own age, and you are, as I say, murdering
him,--slowly perhaps, but none the less surely.”
Marie Corelli is absolutely opposed to “cram.” That was what was killing
little Lionel. At ten he was well advanced in mathematics, Latin and
Greek, history, and even science. No wonder he was often “tired,” or
that he felt as if, to use his own words, it wouldn’t be a bad thing to
belong to the hybernating species and go to sleep all the winter. Miss
Corelli detests cram--the regarding of the young human brain as a sort
of expanding bag or hold-all, to be filled with various bulky articles
of knowledge, useful or otherwise, till it shows signs of bursting. That
was the plan of little Lionel’s new coach, who, after the operation of
cramming a youngster’s brain, would then lock up the brain-bag and trust
to its carrying the owner through life. If the lock broke and the whole
bag gave way, so much the worse for the bag, that was all. That was what
happened with poor little Lionel, who hanged himself, tired of the
“cram,” and worried into insanity by the loss of his mother, the death
of his playmate, and the trouble of considering whether, if there be no
God, and death is mere negation, it was really worth while living at
all.
Healthy physical exercise, reasonable study, and religion as the basis
of that study: so Miss Corelli would train the children.
“Boy” teaches equally healthy lessons, though the story and the
circumstances are totally different. “Boy” might have been a fine
fellow. He had good qualities. That he became a thief and a forger was
the fault of the home circumstances and example. The father of “Boy” was
a drunkard and a blackguard, though a man of good family. The lad’s
mother was a silly-minded slattern. There was too much discipline
brought to bear upon Lionel Valliscourt; far too little was ever tried
on “Boy.” The latter, in his early childhood left to himself, or to mix
only with street lads, and with parents who, for a foolish “pride,”
refused him better training at the hands of others, developed by neglect
into a young ruffian, though he turned out well in the end.
Again, in conclusion, we commend these books to parents, and, indeed, to
all interested in or engaged in the education and upbringing of
children.