III. — A MEDITATION BY PAUL POTIPHAR, ESQ.
Well, my new house is finished—and so am I. I hope Mrs. Potiphar is satisfied. Everybody agrees that it is “palatial.” The daily papers have had columns of description, and I am, evidently, according to their authority, “munificent,” “tasteful,” “enterprising,” and “patriotic.”
Amen! but what business have I with palatial residences? What more can I possibly want, than a spacious, comfortable house? Do I want buhl escritoires? Do I want or molu things? Do I know anything about pictures and statues? In the name of heaven do I want rose-pink bed-curtains to give my grizzly old phiz a delicate “uroral hue,” as Cream Cheese says of Mrs. P.‘s complexion? Because I have made fifty thousand this last year in Timbuctoo bonds, must I convert it all into a house, so large that it will not hold me comfortably,—so splendid that I might as well live in a porcelain vase, for the trouble of taking care of it,—so prodigiously “palatial” that I have to skulk into my private room, put on my slippers, close the door, shut myself up with myself, and wonder why I married Mrs. Potiphar?
This house is her doing. Before I married her, I would have worn yellow silk breeches on ‘Change if she had commanded me—for love. Now I would build her two houses twice as large as this, if she required it—for peace. It’s all over. When I came home from China I was the desirable Mr. Potiphar, and every evening was a field-day for me, in which I reviewed all the matrimonial forces. It is astonishing, now I come to think of it, how skilfully Brigadier-General Mrs. Pettitoes deployed those daughters of hers; how vigorously Mrs. Tabby led on her forlorn hope; and how unweariedly, Murat-like, Mrs. De Famille charged at the head of her cavalry. They deserve to be made Marshals of France, all of them. And I am sure, that if women ought ever to receive honorary testimonials, it is for having “married a daughter well.”
That’s a pretty phrase! The mammas marry, the misses are married.
And yet, I don’t see why I say so. I fear I am getting sour. For certainly, Polly’s mother didn’t marry Polly to me. I fell in love with her, the rest followed. Old Gnu says that it’s true Polly’s mother didn’t marry her, but she did marry herself, to me.
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“Do you really think, Paul Potiphar,” said he, a few months ago, when I was troubled about Polly’s getting a livery, “that your wife was in love with you, a dry old chip from China? Don’t you hear her say whenever any of her friends are engaged, that they ‘have done very well!’ and made a ‘capital match!’ and have you any doubt of her meaning? Don’t you know that this is the only country in which the word ‘money’ must never be named in the young female ear; and in whose best society—not universally nor without exception, of course not; Paul, don’t be a fool—money makes marriages? When you were engaged, ‘the world’ said that it was a ‘capital thing’ for Polly. Did that mean that you were a good, generous, intelligent, friendly, and patient man, who would be the companion for life she ought to have? You know, as well as I do, and as all the people who said it know, that it meant you were worth a few hundred thousands, that you could build a splendid house, keep horses and chariots, and live in style. You and I are sensible men, Paul, and we take the world as we find it; and know that if a man wants a good dinner he must pay for it. We don’t quarrel with this state of things. How can it be helped? But we need not virtuously pretend it’s something else. When my wife, being then a gay girl, first smiled at me, and looked at me, and smelt at the flowers I sent her in an unutterable manner, and proved to me that she didn’t love me by the efforts she made to show that she did, why, I was foolishly smitten with her, and married her. I knew that she did not marry me, but sundry shares in the Patagonia and Nova Zembla Consolidation, and a few hundred house lots upon the island. What then? I wanted her, she was willing to take me,—being sensible enough to know that the stock and the lots had an incumbrance. Voila tout, as young Boosey says. Your wife wants you to build a house. You’d better build it. It’s the easiest way. Make up your mind to Mrs. Potiphar, my dear Paul, and thank heaven you’ve no daughters to be married off by that estimable woman.”
Why does a man build a house? To live in, I suppose—to have a home. But is a fine house a home? I mean, is a “palatial residence,” with Mrs. Potiphar at the head of it, the “home” of which we all dream more or less, and for which we ardently long as we grow older? A house, I take it, is a retreat to which a man hurries from business, and in which he is compensated by the tenderness and thoughtful regard of a woman, and the play of his children, for the rough rubs with men. I know it is a silly view of the case, but I’m getting old and can’t help it. Mrs. Potiphar is perfectly right when she says: