This was the only offer of marriage I ever made in England. There was a certain very wealthy heiress whose uncle was extremely kind to me, and he pushed his kindness so far as to wish me to marry her. She was well-bred, her manners were quite equal to her fortune, and she had a good appearance, but the idea of marriage did not occur to either of us. Some time afterwards, her uncle said to a friend of mine: "I cannot understand Hamerton; I wanted him to marry my niece, and he has gone and married a French woman." "Oh!" said the other, "that was only to improve his French!"
There was another case that I would have passed in silence, had not people in Lancashire persistently circulated a story of an offer and a refusal. A young lady, also a rich heiress, though not quite so rich as the other, had a property a few miles distant from mine. She was a very attractive girl, very pretty, and extremely intelligent, and we were very good friends. To say, in this case, that the idea of marriage never occurred would he untrue; but when I first knew her she was hardly more than a child, and afterwards it became apparent to me that to live happily in her house I should have to stifle all my opinions on important subjects, so I never made the offer that our friends and perhaps she herself expected. Whether she would have accepted me or not is quite another question. Had I made any proposal I should have accompanied it by a very plain statement of my obnoxious opinions on religion and politics, and these would almost certainly have produced a rupture. After my marriage, and before hers, we met again in the old friendly way. I was paying a call with my wife, in a country house in Lancashire, when a carriage came up the drive—her carriage—and the lady of the house, extremely fluttered, asked me if I had no objection to meet Miss ——. "On the contrary," I said, "I like to meet old friends." The young lady visibly enjoyed the humor of the situation, and the embarrassment of our hostess. We talked easily in the old way, and afterwards my wife and I left on foot, and her carriage passed us, rather stately, with servants in livery. "There goes your most dangerous rival," I said to my wife, and told her what story there was to tell. "She is much prettier than I am," was the modest answer, "and evidently a good deal richer; and she is a charming person." In due time Miss —— married very suitably. Her husband is a good Churchman and Conservative, who takes a proper interest in the pursuits belonging to his station.
My guardian was of opinion that with my philosophical convictions, which were at that time not only unpopular, but odious and execrated in our own class in England, I should have to remain an old bachelor. She herself would certainly never have married an unbeliever, and although her great personal affection for me made her glad to have me in the house, she must have felt that it was like sheltering a pariah. Her sister once heard some rumor or suggestion, connecting my name with that of a pious young lady, and looked upon it as a sort of sacrilege. Under these circumstances I came at last to the conclusion that, being under a ban, I would at least enjoy my liberty, either by living my own life as a bachelor, or else by marrying purely and simply according to inclination, without any reference to the opinion of other people.
It was at this time that the idea of a foreign marriage first occurred to me as a possibility. I had never thought of it before, and if such an idea had entered my head, the clear foresight of the enormous inconveniences would have immediately expelled it. A foreign marriage is, in fact, quite an accumulation of inconveniences. One of the two parties must always be living in a foreign country, and in all their intercourse together one of the two must always be speaking a foreign language. The families of the two parties will never know each other or understand each other properly; there will be either estrangement or misunderstanding. And unless there is great largeness of mind in the parties themselves, the difference of national customs is sure to produce quarrels.
All this was plain enough, and yet one morning, when I was writing on my desk (a tall oak desk that I used to stand up to), the idea suddenly came, as if somebody had uttered these words in my ear: "Why should you remain lonely all your days? Eugénie Gindriez would be an affectionate and faithful wife to you. She is not rich, but you would work and fight your way."
I pushed aside the sheet of manuscript and took a sheet of note-paper instead. I then wrote, in French, a letter to a lady in Paris who knew the Gindriez family, and asked her if Mademoiselle Eugénie was engaged to be married. The answer came that she was well, and that there had been no engagement. Soon afterwards I was in Paris.
I called on M. Gindriez, but his daughter was not at home. I asked permission to call in the evening, and she was out again. This was repeated two or three times, and my wife told me afterwards that the absences had not been accidental. At last we met, and there was nothing in her manner but a certain gravity, as if serious resolutions were impending. Her sister showed no such reserve, but greeted me gayly and frankly. After a few days, I was accepted on the condition of an annual visit to France.
From a worldly point of view, this engagement was what is called in French une folie, on my part, and hardly less so on the part of the young lady. We had, however, a kind of inward assurance that in spite of the difference of nationality and other differences, we were, in truth, nearer to each other than most people who contract matrimonial engagements. The "elective affinities" act in spite of all appearances and of many realities.
We have often talked over that time since, and have confessed that we really knew hardly anything of each other, that our union was but an instinctive choice. However, in 1858 I had neither doubt nor anxiety, and in 1889 I have neither anxiety nor doubt.