Your wife claims your courtesy more now, even, than when you were courting her. She has given up, for your sake, all the freedom and pleasures of her maidenhood, and to you she looks for a love that will replace them all. Can you disappoint that trusting affection? Before your marriage you thought no stretch of courtesy too great, if the result was to afford her pleasure; why, then, not strive to keep her love, by the same gentle courtesy you exerted to win it?
“A delicate attention to the minute wants and wishes of your wife, will tend, more than anything else, to the promotion of your domestic happiness. It requires no sacrifices, occupies but a small degree of attention, yet is the fertile source of bliss; since it convinces the object of your regard, that, with the duties of a husband, you have united the more punctilious behaviour of a lover. These trivial tokens of regard certainly make much way in the affections of a woman of sense and discernment, who looks not to the value of the gifts she receives, but perceives in their frequency a continued evidence of the existence and ardor of that love on which the superstructure of her happiness has been erected. The strongest attachment will decline, if you receive it with diminished warmth.”
Mrs. Thrale gives the following advice, which is worth the consideration of every young man:
“After marriage,” she says, “when your violence of passion subsides, and a more cool and tranquil affection takes its place, be not hasty to censure as indifferent, or to lament yourself as unhappy; you have lost that only which it is impossible to retain; and it were graceless amidst the pleasures of a prosperous summer, to regret the blossoms of a transient spring. Neither unwarily condemn your bride’s insipidity, till you have recollected that no object, however sublime, no sound, however charming, can continue to transport us with delight, when they no longer strike us with novelty. The skill to renovate the powers of pleasing is said, indeed, to be possessed by some women in an eminent degree, but the artifices of maturity are seldom seen to adorn the innocence of youth. You have made your choice and ought to approve it.
“To be happy, we must always have something in view. Turn, therefore, your attention to her mind, which will daily grow brighter by polishing. Study some easy science together, and acquire a similarity of tastes, while you enjoy a community of pleasures. You will, by this means, have many pursuits in common, and be freed from the necessity of separating to find amusement; endeavor to cement the present union on every side; let your wife never be kept ignorant of your income, your expenses, your friendships, or your aversions; let her know your very faults, but make them amiable by your virtues; consider all concealment as a breach of fidelity; let her never have anything to find out in your character, and remember that from the moment one of the partners turns spy upon the other, they have commenced a state of hostility.
“Seek not for happiness in singularity, and dread a refinement of wisdom as a deviation into folly. Listen not to those sages who advise you always to scorn the counsel of a woman, and if you comply with her requests pronounce you to be wife-ridden. Think not any privation, except of positive evil, an excellence; and do not congratulate yourself that your wife is not a learned lady, or is wholly ignorant how to make a pudding. Cooking and learning are both good in their places, and may both be used with advantage. With regard to expense, I can only observe, that the money laid out in the purchase of luxuries is seldom or ever profitably employed. We live in an age when splendid furniture and glittering equipage are grown too common to catch the notice of the meanest spectator; and for the greater ones, they can only regard our wasteful folly with silent contempt or open indignation.
“This may, perhaps, be a displeasing reflection; but the following consideration ought to make amends. The age we live in pays, I think, a peculiar attention to the higher distinctions of wit, knowledge, and virtue, to which we may more safely, more cheaply, and more honorably aspire.
“The person of your lady will not grow more pleasing to you; but, pray, let her not suspect that it grows less so. There is no reproof, however pointed, no punishment, however severe, that a woman of spirit will not prefer to neglect; and if she can endure it without complaint, it only proves that she means to make herself amends by the attention of others for the slights of her husband. For this, and for every other reason, it behoves a married man not to let his politeness fail, though his ardour may abate; but to retain, at least, that general civility towards his own lady which he is willing to pay to every other, and not show a wife of eighteen or twenty years old, that every man in company can treat her with more complaisance than he who so often vowed to her eternal fondness.
“It is not my opinion that a young woman should be indulged in every wild wish of her gay heart, or giddy head; but contradiction may be softened by domestic kindness, and quiet pleasures substituted in the place of noisy ones. Public amusements, indeed, are not so expensive as is sometimes imagined; but they tend to alienate the minds of married people from each other. A well-chosen society of friends and acquaintances, more eminent for virtue and good sense than for gaiety and splendor, where the conversation of the day may afford comment for the evening, seems the most rational pleasure that can be afforded. That your own superiority should always be seen, but never felt, seems an excellent general rule.
“If your wife is disposed towards jealousy of you, let me beseech you be always explicit with her, never mysterious. Be above delighting in her pain in all things.”