The quality most of all admired by woman in man is manliness: she can forgive almost anything but his lack of courage.
The manly man, conscious of his strength, is of necessity tender and considerate towards those weaker than himself, and so wins their confidence and love. When he marries, therefore, he takes a wife to shield her from the rude blasts of the world; all that his care and tenderness can do will be done to make lighter for her the ordinary burdens of life. Nor will he expect impossibilities, nor growl because he finds he has married a very human woman, with a great many needs and wants. Angels do not mate with mortals, the contrast would be too one-sided.
It is well with the man who has in his wife not only a bright companion for his days of sunshine, but who in the crises of his life finds in her heart the jewel of common sense and the pearl of a quick understanding. The wife who comprehends him at once when he says expenditure has been too heavy, that it must be reduced to meet the altered finances, and who not only comprehends, but cheerfully acquiesces, planning with him how retrenchment can best be carried out; the wife to whom the lack of the new bonnet or the new carpet is a matter of small moment,—she it is who makes glad the heart of her husband. Ay, but what kind of a husband? He must first deserve this jewel before he can expect her to display those qualities which money cannot buy, but which prevent marriage from being the failure sundry croakers would have us believe. How is he to deserve her? how win her to this most desirable height of perfection? By treating her as an entirely reasonable being, which most women are, in spite of many affirmations to the contrary.
The monetary basis of the engagement matrimonial is not, unfortunately, always sound. How common it is for a man to keep his wife in utter ignorance of the state of his affairs, thus depriving her of the only safe guide she can have in the conduct of her domestic affairs! If a woman is to be a man's true helpmeet, she must stand shoulder to shoulder with him in everything, sharing as far as is possible his anxieties and his hopes, and by judicious expenditure of his means aiding him to the best position it is possible for him to attain. Of course there are poor silly creatures fit to be wife to no man, who do not deserve and could not appreciate confidence, and who are lamentably ignorant of the value of £ s. d. But the majority of wives, I would hope, possess sufficient common sense to comprehend the simple questions of income and expenditure when candidly placed before them. How delightful, as well as imperative, to go into a committee of ways and means periodically, talking over everything confidentially, and feeling the sweet bond of union growing closer and dearer because of the cares and worries none can escape, though love and sympathy can make them light!
There is a type of husband—unfortunately rather common—who begrudges his wife, whatever her character and disposition, every penny she spends, even though it is spent primarily for his own comfort, and who has never in his life cheerfully opened out to her his purse, whatever he may have done with the thing he calls his heart. This is a very serious matter, and one which presses heavily on the hearts of many wives. It is hard for a young girl, who may in her father's house have had pocket money always to supply her simple needs, to find herself after marriage practically penniless—having to ask for every penny she requires, and often to explain minutely how and where it is to be spent. I have known a man who required an absolute account of every halfpenny spent by his wife, and who took from her change of the shilling he had given her for a cab fare. We must pray, for the credit of the sex, that there are few so lost to all gentlemanly feeling, to speak of nothing else; but it is certain that, through thoughtlessness as much as stinginess often, many sensitive women suffer keenly from this form of humiliation. It ought not to be. If a woman is worthy to be trusted with a man's honour, which is supposed to be more valuable to him than his gold, let her likewise be trusted with a little of the latter, without having to crave it and answer for it as a servant sent on an errand counts out the copper change to her master on her return. There are many little harmless trifles a woman wants, many small kindnesses she would do on the impulse of the moment, had she money in her purse; and though she may sometimes not be altogether wise, she is blessed in the doing, and nobody is the poorer. However small a man's income, there are surely a few odd shillings the wife might have for her very own, if only to gratify her harmless little whims, and to make her feel that she sometimes has a penny to spare. It is quite desirable, I think, that there should be, even where means are limited (I am not of course alluding to working people whose weekly wage is barely sufficient for family needs), some arrangement whereby the wife may have something, however small, upon which she can depend, and which she can spend when and how she pleases.
Some indulgent fathers, foreseeing the possibility of their daughters feeling the lack of a little money, continue their allowance to their married daughters; but there are very few husbands, one would think, who would care to leave their wives so dependent for little luxuries it should be their privilege to supply.
The labourer is surely worthy of his hire; and the wife, upon whose shoulders the domestic load presses most heavily, is as justly entitled to her payment as her housemaid, whose duties are more clearly defined. Some high-flown personages may think this a very gross view of the case, and say, perchance, that where love is there can never be any hardship felt. But I know that I touch upon what is a sore point with many women, and I can only hope that if any stingy husbands read these words they will try a little experiment on their own account, and see how the unexpected gift of a little money, offered lovingly, can bring the light back to eyes which have grown a little weary, and smooth the lines away from a brow which care has wrinkled before its time.
The ideal husband we are considering will also be a home-keeping husband. Let me not here be misunderstood. No sensible woman will desire to keep her husband always at her side, nor can any woman make a more profound mistake than to try and wean the man she has married away from all his old friends and associations. I am speaking of good men, of course, whose friends and associations are such as she need not regard with apprehension. Yet it is a mistake which many women make, and it is a common saying with the bachelors who may miss a certain bright spirit from their midst, "Oh, nobody ever sees him now, he's married!" And there is a peculiar emphasis on the last word which you must hear to appreciate, but it signifies that he is as good as dead.
Now why should this be? The wise wife, instead of being so small-minded and jealous, should try to remember that there is a side of man's nature which demands sympathy and contact with his own sex—and also that her husband knew and loved these old friends of his perhaps before he ever saw her. Let her try instead to make them all so welcome in her home that they will come and come again, and instead of pitying her husband because he has got his head into a noose will go away thinking him a lucky fellow. This is not an impossibility. It can be done.
But while this husband of ours does not give up his old friends of his own sex, nor abjure all the manly pursuits and recreations so dear to his soul in his state of bachelorhood, he will take care that they do not absorb an undue share of his leisure, but will prefer home and wife to them all, and let her know it. He will not be above expressing his satisfaction when his home suddenly strikes him with more force than usual as being the sweetest place on earth; he will say so just as frankly as he finds fault when there is just cause for complaint; and she will return it by a loving interest pressed down and running over, or I am neither woman nor wife.