It is the unexpected that constantly happens, and the daily girding up to meet the emergencies of the hour is the task of every wife who seeks to make her home a comfortable, habitable abode. It is work—real, earnest work, quite as hard in its way as the husband's.
Husbands should know the value and the difficulty of the work of their wives, and should never forget that a little help is worth a great deal of fault-finding.
The husband's affection must never be merged in an overweening conceit of his authority. His rule must be the rule of reason and kindness, not of severity and caprice. He is the houseband and should bind all together like a corner-stone, but not crush everything like a mill-stone. Jeremy Taylor says: "The dominion of a man over his wife is no other than as the soul rules the body; for which it takes mighty care, and uses it with a delicate tenderness, and cares for it in all contingencies, and watches to keep it from all evils, and studies to make for it fair provisions, and very often is led by its inclinations and desires, and does never contradict its appetites but when they are evil, and then also not without some trouble and sorrow; and its government comes only to this, it furnishes the body with light and understanding; and the body furnishes the soul with hands and feet; the soul governs, because the body cannot else be happy; but the government is no other than provision, as a nurse governs a child, when she causes him to eat, and to be warm, and dry, and quiet."
It sometimes happens that she who ought to have most influence on her husband's mind has least. A man will frequently take the advice of a stranger who cares not for him, in preference to the cordial and sensible opinion of his own wife. Consideration of the domestic evils such a line of conduct is calculated to produce ought to prevent its adoption. Besides, there is in woman an intuitive quickness, a penetration, and a foresight, that make her advice very valuable. "If I was making up a plan of consequence," said Lord Bolingbroke, "I should like first to consult with a sensible woman." Many a man has been ruined by professed friends, because when his wife, with a woman's quick detection of character, saw through them and urged him to give them up, he would not do so. And if a wife is the partner of her husband's cares surely she ought also to be the companion of his pleasures. There are selfish husbands who go about amusing themselves; but in reference to their wives they seem to be of the same opinion as the ancient philosopher, who only approved of women leaving home three times in their lives—to be baptized, married, and buried! Does it never occur to such Egyptian taskmasters that all work and no play is quite as bad for women as for men, and that the wife who makes her cage comfortable should occasionally be offered and even urged to take a little amusement? I know of one wife who struck under such treatment. Whenever her husband spent his money and time too freely away from home, she used to take her child and go for a little excursion, which of course cost money. If he gave more "drinks" than he could afford to himself and to his club-companions, she used to frighten him into good behaviour by ordering a bottle of champagne for herself. Giving in this way a Roland for every Oliver, this really good wife soon brought her husband to see that his selfishness was a losing game.
Cobbett protests against a husband getting to like his club, or indeed any house, better than his own. When absent from necessity, there is no wound given to the heart of the wife; she concludes that her husband would be with her if he could, and that satisfies. Yet in these cases her feelings ought to be consulted as much as possible; she ought to be apprised of the probable duration of the absence, and of the time of return.
And what Cobbett preached upon this text he himself practised. He and a friend called Finnerty were dining with a mutual friend. At eleven o'clock Cobbett said to the host, "We must go; my wife will be frightened." "You do not mean to go home to-night," was the reply. "I told him I did; and then sent my son, who was with us, to order out the post-chaise. We had twenty-three miles to go, during which we debated the question whether Mrs. Cobbett would be up to receive us, I contending for the affirmative and he for the negative. She was up, and had a nice fire for us to sit down at. She had not committed the matter to a servant; her servants and children were all in bed; and she was up, to perform the duty of receiving her husband and his friend. 'You did not expect him?' said Finnerty. 'To be sure I did,' said she; 'he never disappointed me in his life.'"
We ourselves heard a wife saying to her husband only the other day, "I would rather you had done that than given me ten pounds." What had he done? Only put himself out a little to return home at the exact hour he had appointed to be with her. That the little attention gratified her so much will not seem strange to any one who has observed the power of little things in imparting either pleasure or pain.
A kind husband, when he goes from home, generally brings back some little present to his wife. Attentions like this keep fresh that element of romance which should never be entirely absent from married life. They remind the now staid, but still impressible matron, of the days of her maiden power, when a cold look from her brought winter into the room, and when the faintest wish would have sent a certain young gentleman on a walk of a dozen miles for the first violets. Yes, now and then give your wife a present—a real present, which, without involving undue expense, is good enough to compel a certain sacrifice, and suitable enough to make her cheek flush with delight at seeing that just as the bride was dearer than the sweetheart, the wife is yet dearer than the bride. There is quite as much human nature in a wife as in a husband (men forget this), and a little tender petting does her a great deal of good, and may even be better than presents.
What a model husband and father Macaulay would have been if he had married! His sister, Lady Trevelyan, says, that "those who did not know him at home, never knew him in his most brilliant, witty, and fertile vein." He was life and sunshine to young and old in the sombre house in Great Ormond Street, where the forlorn old father, like a blighted oak, lingered on in leafless decay, reading one long sermon to his family on Sunday afternoons, and another long sermon on Sunday evenings—"where Sunday walking for walking's sake was never allowed, and even going to a distant church was discouraged." Through this Puritanic gloom Macaulay shot like a sunbeam, and turned it into a fairy scene of innocent laughter and mirth. Against Macaulay, the author, severe things may be said; but as to his conduct in his own home—as a son, as a brother, and an uncle—it is only the barest justice to say that he appears to have touched the furthest verge of human virtue, sweetness, and generosity. His thinking was often, if not generally, pitched in what we must call a low key, but his action might put the very saints to shame. He reversed a practice too common among men of genius, who are often careful to display all their shining and attractive qualities to the outside world, and keep for home consumption their meanness, selfishness, and ill-temper. Macaulay struck no heroic attitude of benevolence, magnanimity, and aspiration before the world—rather the opposite; but in the circle of his home affections he practised those virtues without letting his right hand know what was done by his left.
Writing to his oldest and dearest friend in the first days of her overwhelming grief, Her Majesty the Queen described the Prince Consort as having been to her "husband, father, lover, master, friend, adviser, and guide." There could scarcely be a better description of what a husband ought to be.