How to be Happy Though Married: Being a Handbook to Marriage

by E. J. Hardy

When death removed Stella from Swift, and he was left alone to think of what he had lost, he described her as "the truest, most virtuous, and valuable friend, that I, or perhaps any other person, was ever blessed with." Henceforward he must strive and suffer alone. The tenderness, of which his attachment to Stella had been the strongest symptom, deeply as it had struck its roots into his nature, withered into cynicism. But a lock of Stella's hair is said to have been found in Swift's desk, when his own fight was ended, and on the paper in which it was wrapped were written words that have become proverbial for the burden of pathos that their forced brevity seems to hide—"Only a woman's hair." It is for each reader to read his own meaning into them.

Dr. Johnson's wife was querulous, exacting, old, and the reverse of beautiful, and yet a considerable time after her death he said that ever since the sad event he seemed to himself broken off from mankind; a kind of solitary wanderer in the wild of life, without any direction or fixed point of view; a gloomy gazer on the world to which he had little relation. After recording some good resolution in his Journal he was in the habit since her death of writing after it his wife's name—"Tetty." It is only a word; but how eloquent it is! When a certain Mr. Edwards asked him if he had ever known what it was to have a wife, Johnson replied: "Sir, I have known what it was to have a wife, and (in a solemn, tender, faltering tone) I have known what it was to lose a wife. I had almost broke my heart." Nor did he allow himself to forget this experience. To New Year's Day, Good Friday, Easter Day, and his own birthday, which he set apart as sacred days dedicated to solemn thought and high communion with his own soul, he added the day of his wife's death.

Nor are such separations less felt in humble life. A year or two ago the newspapers in describing a colliery accident related that upon the tin water-bottle of one of the dead men brought out of the Seaham Pit, there was scratched, evidently with a nail, the following letter to his wife: "Dear Margaret,—There was forty of us altogether at 7 A.M., some was singing hymns, but my thought was on my little Michael. I thought that him and I would meet in heaven at the same time. Oh, dear wife, God save you and the children, and pray for myself. Dear wife, farewell. My last thoughts are about you and the children. Be sure and learn the children to pray for me. Oh, what a terrible position we are in.—Michael Smith, 54, Henry Street." The little Michael he refers to was his child whom he had left at home ill. The lad died on the day of the explosion.

A writer on The Orkneys and Shetland tells the following. A native of Hoy went one day to his minister and said, "Oh! sir, but the ways of Providence are wonderful! I thought I had met with a sair misfortune when I lost baith my coo and my wife at aince over the cliff, twa months sin; but I gaed over to Graemsay, and I hae gotten a far better coo and a far bonnier wife."

That a wife is not always so easily replaced is evident from the following letter which appeared in the Belfast papers: "Sir,—I request permission to inform your readers of the fair sex that I have just received a letter from a young man residing in a rapidly-rising town of a few months' growth, and terminus of several railways, in one of the Western States of America, telling me that he has lost his wife, and would wish to get another one—a nice little Irish girl, just like the other one; that she should be 'between twenty and twenty-five years of age, of good habits, of good forme, vertchaus, and a Protestant.' My correspondent, who is a perfect stranger to me, informs me that he is 28 years of age, and 'ways' 150 lbs.; that he is a carpenter by trade, and owns a farm of 65 acres, and that he can give the best of references. I am writing to him for his references and his photograph, and also for a photograph and description of his late wife, on receipt of which I will address you again.—Vere Foster, Belfast, Jan. 5, 1883."

This poor, uneducated carpenter was so happy with his nice little Irish girl that when taken from him he could not help trying to get another one just like her, and sends more than three thousand miles for a chip of the old block. If any blame him for seeking for a second wife let them reflect on the awful solitude of a backwoods settlement when the prairie flower represented by a nice little Irish girl had faded and died. By desiring to marry again he paid the highest compliment to his first wife, for he showed that she had made him a happy man.

It is sometimes said that the happiest days of a man's life is the day of his wedding and the day of his wife's funeral. And the Quarterly Review, in an article on Church Bells, related that one Thomas Nash in 1813 bequeathed fifty pounds a year to the ringers of the Abbey Church at Westminster, "on condition of their ringing on the whole peal of bells, with clappers muffled, various solemn and doleful changes on the 14th of May in every year, being the anniversary of my wedding-day; and also on the anniversary of my decease to ring a grand bob-major, and merry, mirthful peals, unmuffled, in joyful commemoration of my happy release from domestic tyranny and wretchedness."

As a rule, however, no matter how much a husband and wife have tormented each other the separation when it comes is very painful. How true to life is Trollope's description of the effect of Mrs. Proudie's death upon the bishop. "A wonderful silence had come upon him which for the time almost crushed him. He would never hear that well-known voice again! He was free now. Even in his misery—for he was very miserable—he could not refrain from telling himself that. No one could now press uncalled for into his study, contradict him in the presence of those before whom he was bound to be authoritative, and rob him of all his dignity. There was no one else of whom he was afraid. She had at least kept him out of the hands of other tyrants. He was now his own master, and there was a feeling—I may not call it of relief, for as yet there was more of pain in it than of satisfaction—a feeling as though he had escaped from an old trouble at a terrible cost, of which he could not as yet calculate the amount.... She had in some ways, and at certain periods of his life, been very good to him. She had kept his money for him and made things go straight when they had been poor. His interests had always been her interests. Without her he would never have been a bishop. So, at least, he told himself now, and so told himself probably with truth. She had been very careful of his children. She had never been idle. She had never been fond of pleasure. She had neglected no acknowledged duty. He did not doubt that she was now on her way to heaven. He took his hands down from his head, and clasping them together, said a little prayer. It may be doubted, whether he quite knew for what he was praying. The idea of praying for her soul, now that she was dead, would have scandalized him. He certainly was not praying for his own soul. I think he was praying that God might save him from being glad that his wife was dead.... But yet his thoughts were very tender to her. Nothing reopens the springs of love so fully as absence, and no absence so thoroughly as that which must needs be endless. We want that which we have not; and especially that which we can never have. She had told him in the very last moments of her presence with him that he was wishing that she were dead, and he had made her no reply. At the moment he had felt, with savage anger, that such was his wish. Her words had now come to pass, and he was a widower; and he assured himself that he would give all that he possessed in the world to bring her back again."

Richard Cobden once asked in reference to a famous and successful but unscrupulous statesman, "How will it be with him when all is retrospect?" Husband and wife, how will it be when death has separated you, and your married life is retrospect?

Many a man or woman, going on from day to day in the faithful performance of duty, without any sweet token of approval to cheer the sometimes weary path, would find it act as the very wine of life could he or she only hear by anticipation some few of the passionate words of appreciation or regret that will be spoken when the faithful heart, stilled for ever, can no longer be moved by the tone of loving commendation. Do not in this way let us keep all the good hermetically sealed up till the supreme touch of death shall force it open.