IV
February, 1913.
IAM so glad, my dear Caroline, to hear that you were interested in my last letter. It is an important subject—marriage—and one I want more fully to discuss with you. No one accomplishes any rôle successfully without some preparatory training—and the rôle of a married woman requires a good deal of thought bestowed upon it before it should be undertaken.
As I said in my last epistle, the affair is a bargain, in which too often the modern young people refuse to recognize any of the responsibilities. Let us, for the sake of our argument, suppose, Caroline, that you have fallen in love with, and married, what appears to be a suitable young man in fortune and character. We will pretend that he is the eldest son of some one of importance, and in his turn one day will occupy a great position. If you have carefully followed the advice I have been giving you, you will be so distinguished in appearance and manner that you ought to be an ornament to your new station. And you must make your husband feel from the very beginning that you mean to take the deepest interest in all his tastes and pursuits: if they are political, that you will endeavor to forward his interest and understand his aims; if they lie in the country and the management of his estate, that you mean to fulfil all the duties which such an existence requires. If he is a soldier, a sailor, a barrister, a financier—no matter what—this same principle applies, though in the latter professions you cannot take perhaps such active interest; but you must show him that at all events you can give him your sympathy and understanding, and make his home pleasant and agreeable when he returns to it. If you make it smooth and charming for him you may be as certain that he will prefer to spend all his spare time with you as that he will break away immediately if you do not.
All human beings unconsciously in their leisure moments do what they like best. If you find a man in his free hours doing something which he obviously cannot like, it is because to accomplish his duty is the thing he likes best. Thus, if you bore your husband in his leisure, he may stay with you for a while from a sense of duty, but he will begin to make excuses of work to curtail the moments, and he will snatch time from his real work for his pleasure elsewhere.
Whether you keep your husband’s love and devotion lies almost entirely with yourself and your own intelligence, and I might say sagacity! Remember this maxim: “A fool can win the love of a man, but it requires a woman of resources to keep it”—the difficulty being much greater in a country like England, where the women are in the majority, than in another where they have to be fought for, and the men are the more numerous.
We will suppose that you desire to retain the love and devotion of your husband, and have not only married him for a home and a place in society. In this case face the fact that it is always a difficult matter for a woman to keep a man in love with her when once she belongs to him, and he has no obstacles to overcome. For man is a hunter naturally, and when the quarry is obtained his interest in that particular beast wanes, although the interest in securing by his skill another of the same species remains as active as ever.