I do hope every bride may soon have her dot, just like all French and German maidens have; but in any case she must not go penniless upon her wedding tour. Coventry Patmore’s idea in the ‘Angel of the House,’ that his three-days’ bride asked him to pay for the sand-shoes—‘Felix, will you pay?’—as a matter of course, is a mere man’s notion. I am certain she must have hated to do it, and would have given anything for some money of her own: so do not let Paterfamilias forget this, even if he have the conscience to allow his daughter to go penniless into her husband’s house; and let him give his daughter a nice little sum of money, in order that she may not have to ask her husband for a farthing until their return home, when the allowance question should be gone into and settled, thus doing away with the constant jar about money, which is at the bottom of more matrimonial unhappiness than is anything else.
I think I have said all that is to be said on the subject of weddings, and have stated boldly how best to secure the happiness of our children; it is a subject on which I feel very deeply, and when I see girls marry men who cannot by any possibility make good husbands or good fathers, I long to tell them this, but of course no one but their mothers can; and I shall hope that I may influence one or two to do so, and moreover to insist that their children do not marry to perpetuate the disease or the evil tendencies that must wreck innocent lives that have no business ever to exist; for while, if marriage is entered into properly, there can be no failure about it, marriage being the perfection of life, the uniting and joining of the two lives, which, separate, are indeed incomplete, but which, brought together, form an absolute and wonderful whole, a marriage which perpetuates the vices of a drunkard, of an evil temper, of an habitual liar, or the constitution of a consumptive or of a lunatic, is absolutely wicked, and can never be anything but a curse to the wife and mother, whatever it may be to the man himself. A roué has discounted his chances of a happy married life. No woman can reform a roué, and even if she could she should not try, because in her children she will perpetuate the father’s vices, and will make the world worse a thousandfold by those she brings into it, while at the best she may save a soul, though I personally do not believe she could even do this; at all events, it is not right to sacrifice her future and her children’s future in the endeavour, and therefore I hope she may never try.
As I said before, we cannot explain away the mysterious influence of heredity; but as it exists and is inexorable in its consequences, we must acknowledge it, and we must all do our best so to live that we can give our children the noblest inheritance on earth—an unimpaired constitution, and a name unstained by any mean or low vice, a name that may be our proudest possession: aye, even if we saw it first above the window of some suburban shop! Then shall the world become better because we have lived in it and given it hostages also: and so shall we prove what I should like to be always preaching—that marriage is the most blessed state on earth, if it is begun and carried on mutually with esteem, affection, and real consideration, for each other’s welfare.
CHAPTER IX.
ABOUT THE BOYS.
The poor boys! When I begin to write about their home I could almost weep when I think how small a space of their young lives they are permitted to spend under the home roof.
I have said so much in my former book about home education that I suppose I must not say very much more now, but I long to repeat my protest against the present manner in which boys are sent away from home, almost before they are able to stand alone, quite before they are able to withstand all the thousand and one temptations that assail them the moment they are turned into the herd of boys which represents a school, and where the poor things have to spend most of what ought to be the very happiest part of anyone’s life. However, as public opinion is against me, I am going to set down here the best way of mitigating the evils, and I also intend to give the relative expenses at some of the best of our public schools and colleges, so that those who read this book may see at a glance whether they can afford to send their boys to Harrow, Eton, Rugby, or Clifton—Harrow being put first by me, as I am devoted to the bright, healthy, happy place, as I suppose all are devoted to the public school of which they know most; for, much as I deprecate the life at school which is so far away from home influence, and much as I should prefer to live at Harrow and have my boys home at night, there is something about a public school education which nothing else gives, and which can be entered fearlessly at fourteen if the boy have been well trained and if he have a certain amount of moral courage and good principles of his own. It is madness to send a weak-minded lad who inherits evil propensities to a public school; he is sure sooner or later to disgrace himself and his wretched parents at the same time.
But before going into the question of schools and expenses there, let us dwell for a few minutes on the arrangement of the boys’ rooms in the house, which should ever be the happiest place in the world to them, and from which should flow that never-failing stream of sympathy in their progress, their pursuits, and their general welfare which has borne many a lad on to success and to a brilliant place in the world in after life. An authority told me once that the boys who did best were undoubtedly those who had most letters from home; who knew everything that was happening at home just as well as if they were there; to whom the movements of the family and of the animals were as familiar as if they still were among them, and who were not afraid to tell their parents anything. Sympathy is a priceless gift; sympathy between home and the boys at school is an anchor indeed, and will keep them safely in the harbour when every other means might otherwise have failed. And this sympathy can but be expressed in constant communication between home and school, and by a loving care, while the boys are absent, of their rooms, their belongings, and the especial niche which should be kept sacredly for them, and not cleared out hastily for them to inhabit, as it were, on sufferance during the all too brief holiday time they spend at home.
I do not mean to say that during their absence the rooms should never be used, that would be simply too ridiculous; but they should not be taken into household wear; if they are they cease to be the boys’ rooms, and in consequence the boys feel they are a nuisance and putting some one else out; they do not naturally take their places in the circle, feeling they are filling a gap which has never been filled since the day they returned to school.
I should certainly try to have a place set apart for the boys for wet days and for their own special occupations; if this cannot be managed, their bedrooms should be so arranged that at one end they can carry on their several hobbies without doing any damage to the finer portions of the house; but, if in any way possible, secure a sitting-room for them where they can do as they like; and if you want really perfect holidays find some enthusiastic skater, cricketer, or walker as holiday tutor, and make him responsible for the welfare of the boys. As they do not live at home, naturally there is no one told off to keep special care of them or to go about with them; if this is done, the holidays pass without a hitch, and without unduly threatening the mother’s life, who, try as she will, cannot be sure that, if the boys are out alone for half an hour longer than usual, they are not drowned, or lost, or lying in ditches with broken legs, and who can never school herself to be their companion, even should she be strong enough to be so, because she is always expecting something dreadful to happen to them. At least I know what I feel on the subject, and I suppose I only feel what everyone else does in the matter. In the boys’ rooms, whether bed or sitting rooms, I advise always the invaluable dado; this ensures the lower parts of the wall being kept tidy, and minimises the expense of doing the rooms up when they become shabby. A rail along the floor, or rather a piece of wood about three inches wide laid along the floor close to the wainscoting, will keep the chairs, &c., off the paint, and then, if we have a pretty paper above the serviceable matting, or cretonne, or arras cloth which forms the dado, we shall be quite safe to preserve the room for some time, looking fresh and nice and bright.