And now to think about weddings and marriages, generally a most enthralling subject to fathers and mothers when the children have grown up and they begin to contemplate the idea of their leaving the fireside for homes of their own, when begins, I think, the most difficult period of our life, and when we cannot be too careful whom we admit to our houses, the while we must not be unduly fussy, else we spoil our children’s chance of happiness, and make them miserably anxious for themselves and their possible fate—a fate I would postpone for ever if I had my way, for who can calmly contemplate passing on one’s daughter to another’s care, I wonder? while one’s possible daughters-in-law can never be anything, I fear, save successful rivals to the throne one occupies in one‘s boys’ hearts.
But these things will happen, and equally of course all girls should marry, a happy marriage being the best fate for any woman, no matter how cultivated, how talented she may be. I have no doubts whatever on that subject. Suppose she writes; who so fit to battle with the publisher as the husband? or she paints; well, he can smile on the critics and undermine them with a good cigar and all the rest of it. Or does she sing? Surely, surely the husband’s protection comes in there more than ever; while for those lucky women who only want to fulfil their destiny and make a home, the husband of course takes his right position at once, and is guardian, bread-winner, and head in a way that Nature intended him to be, and that all real women want him to be. The few who clamour for another arrangement don’t understand the subject at all, and are as ridiculous as they are abnormal and few in number, and therefore need not be considered in the least. There is, therefore, no doubt that women should marry if they can; and if not, well, there is plenty for them to do, although they will never be as happy—I am sure of that—as the happily married woman; neither will they ever suffer as an unhappily married woman must, albeit very many unhappy marriages would have been far otherwise had people had common sense at first and married each other as what they were, and not what they supposed each other to be; resenting their own mistakes on the unfortunate object they had deified, and not on their own stupid selves, while of course they should be resolved to make the best of what was inevitable, and to really make the wife or husband become all they had imagined him or her to be.
When the discussion on the subject of ‘marriage being a failure’ was going forward I was only deterred from joining in the fray by the knowledge that my indignant feelings on this subject were so strong they rendered me incoherent; but I was glad I did not, for no one could have driven sense into the heads of a good many of the silly women who wrote rubbish about their woes. Of course there are unhappy marriages, plenty of them, made worse, to my mind, a thousand times by our present disgracefully easy divorce laws; but, trace them to the beginning, and I venture to state that one and all of these marriages would have been happy had the parties to them been properly brought up, and, above all, properly told what marriage really means, not only to themselves, but to those who may very probably come after them. Not one girl who marries but knows that the man by whose side she stands at the altar is not only her lover, but the possible father of her children; and yet what mother would not consider herself simply dreadful were she to say this to her daughter when the proposal is made, and her fate is yet in abeyance? and yet what more important matter could be spoken of? I think none. A girl who marries a man—an old man—for his money, even from the very highest possible motives—from the idea, may be, that she is not only ensuring the safety of her own future but that of many who may be near and dear to her—is committing not only a crime against herself and her own future, but is ensuring that the faults, sins, and selfishnesses of the man she marries are passed on to endless generations; and where such a marriage is contemplated I maintain that a mother has an imperative duty before her, and that she must tell her daughter straight out, that the sufferings she must endure in her own person in daily contact with her future husband will not be a tithe of what will come upon her when she begins to recognise his sins and his evil ways reappearing in those children who may come to her, and who will bring their own retribution with them; be sure of that.
It is a priceless boon to know that one inherits a right and a duty to be good in the broadest sense of the word. I personally do not care one fig what a man’s trade or worldly position is so long as he is absolutely honest and trustworthy, and would not act or speak an untruth; and this is the sort of inheritance we should strive to hand on to our children. The higher the station the more should be the endeavour to live in such a way that our example may be valued; but, whatever the station, let us remember that there is always some one influenced by us, and that we have obligations to them which we must consider if we want to live a really good life.
And one of the first things to think of is this question of marriage, not only because of ourselves, but because of the children who may come to us, and who must be thought of before we give our girls to men who may make them ‘fairish’ husbands; perhaps may not ill-treat them or beat them, but who are not possessed of sufficient individuality to be the heads of their own houses, and who have not honest souls and some ambitions above the mere ruck of living and making as much money as they possibly can, not only because such men can never be the makers and possessors of a home, but because they may leave children whose weaknesses and wickednesses may not only break their mother’s heart, but may make the world worse than they find it, one’s truest ambition being to make the world, or one’s own special corner thereof, better than one found it in some way or other.
Young people naturally resent advice, and rarely, if ever, act upon it, and we have all taken this to heart so much that some of us have ceased to give advice at all. But this should not be so; the advice may not be taken—that we cannot help—but it is our duty to give it, and I hope all mothers will do so, whether their children act upon it or not. We should not shirk a duty because we cannot see any effects; they may appear even when we have long ceased to look for them.
The sins of the fathers must be visited on the children; there is no doubt about that. We need not argue about it; it is a fact that we all have to acknowledge, and therefore there is no need to go into the rights and wrongs of the matter, for no amount of argument will do away with this inevitable truth; and equally, therefore, a woman should choose not only a man she loves, but a man she respects, and one it shall be her very greatest pride to know her children will resemble. She will be spared endless suffering if she do, for there is no suffering on earth like that caused by wicked children, or even by the anxieties about weakly and suffering children; and she had better remain an old maid all her life than bring upon herself the unspeakable wretchedness of having children who are a constant source of anxiety to her because of what they may, nay, of what they must inherit.
Given a clean record, a stainless youth, a good constitution, and an honest worker, and we need ask no more for our girls. It will not hurt them to begin their new life on a much lower scale than that which they have been accustomed to, more especially if we have taught them their duty to themselves and their future. Then, if we know that the young couple honestly love each other, we can feel content.
And by love I do not mean blind, unreasoning passion, the mad, extraordinary feeling that one reads about in novels, and which generally lands one or the other in the Divorce Court, and of which I have nothing to say, but I do mean that wonderful self-devotion to another, the mutual respect and regard, and the absolute unselfishness, that make up the true love that never fades, and that increases year by year in those whose married life was based on such love as this, and whose home reflects around the happiness which is centred there, and which can only be procured by those who begin their life together on a proper basis, and who do not expect to find in each other the god or goddess of perfection, who would probably be as unpleasant to live with as he or she is undoubtedly non-existent in this world of ours.
Of course all this sounds fearfully prosaic, and is, no doubt, middle-aged philosophy; but it would not be worth writing down if it were not middle-aged, because it would be imagination only and not the fruits of experience. I have lived a certain number of years, and I have had large opportunities of observation, and I am certain of what I am saying, that the truest marriages are those which are framed on respect as well as love, and that those women are the happiest who can implicitly trust and believe in the men to whom they have given themselves in some measure body and soul; and that, furthermore, they get the most out of life who take care every moment they live has something to occupy it, and that that occupation benefits someone beside their immediate selves.