About London

by J. Ewing Ritchie

Alas! our age is not a marrying age; and, therefore, I fear it is an unholy one: neither our young men nor our young maidens honestly fall in love and marry now-a-days. I don’t know that the Registrar-General’s report says such. I know that many of his marriages are affairs of convenience; unions of businesses, or thousands, or broad lands; not marriages “holy,” in the sense of the prayer-book and of God. A man who marries simply for love, exposes himself to ridicule; the modern ingenuous youth is not so green as all that; if

he marries at all, it must be an heiress, or, at any rate, one well dowered. The last thing your modern well-bred beauty does, is to unite her fate with that of a man in the good old-fashioned way. She has learnt to set her heart upon the accidents of life,—the fine house, the establishment; and if these she cannot have, she will even die an old maid. The real is sacrificed to the imaginary; the substance, to the shadow; the present, to the morrow that never comes. A man says he will become rich; he will sacrifice everything to that; and the chances are he becomes poor in heart and purse. The maiden—

With the meek brown eyes,
In whose orb a shadow lies,
Like the dusk in evening skies—

loses all her divinity, and pines away, and becomes what I care not to name; and the world—whose wisdom is folly—sanctions all this. It calls it prudence, foresight. A man has no business to marry till he can keep a wife, is the cuckoo cry; which would have some meaning if a wife was a horse or a dog, and not an answer to a human need, and an essential to success in life. The world forgets that man is not an automaton, but a being fearfully and wonderfully framed. No machine, but a lyre responsive to the breath of every passing passion: now fevered with pleasure; now toiling for gold; anon seeking to build up a lofty fame; and that the more eager and passionate and daring he is—the more eagle is his eye, and the loftier his aim, the more he needs woman—

the comforter and the helpmeet—by his side. Our fathers did not ignore this, and they succeeded. Because the wife preserved them from the temptations of life; because she, with her words and looks of love, assisted them to bear the burdens and fight the battles of life; because she stood by her husband’s side as his helpmeet; bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh; soothing each sorrow; aiding each upward aim: it was thus they became great; and it is because we do not thus, we pale before them. It is not good for man to be alone. Man has tried to disobey the divine law, and lived alone; and what has been the result?—even when tried by men of superior sanctity, as in the case of the Romish Church, has the world gained in happiness or morality? I trow not. Take the limited experience of our own age, and fathers and mothers know, to their bitter cost, I am right. The manhood, brave and generous, much of it wrecked in our great cities, will bear me out. But matrimony is more than this. It spite of the hard matter-of-fact, sceptical, and therefore sensual character of the passing day, will it not be confessed that the union of man and woman, as husband and wife, is the greatest earthly need, and is followed by the greatest earthly good? Unhappy marriages there may be; imprudent ones there may be; but such are not the rule; and very properly our legislators have agreed to give relief in such cases. “Nature never did betray the soul that loved her;” and nature tells men and women to marry. Just as the young man is entering upon life—just as he comes to independence

and man’s estate—just as the crisis of his being is to be solved, and it is to be seen whether he decide with the good, and the great, and the true, or whether he sink and be lost for ever, Matrimony gives him ballast and a right impulse. Of course it can’t make of a fool a philosopher; but it can save a fool from being foolish. War with nature and she takes a sure revenge. Tell a young man not to have an attachment that is virtuous, and he will have one that is vicious. Virtuous love—the honest love of a man for the woman he is about to marry, gives him an anchor for his heart; something pure and beautiful for which to labour and live; and the woman, what a purple light it sheds upon her path; it makes life for her no day-dream; no idle hour; no painted shadow; no passing show; but something real, earnest, worthy of her heart and head. But most of us are cowards and dare not think so; we lack grace; we are of little faith; our inward eye is dim and dark. The modern young lady must marry in style; the modern young gentleman marries a fortune. But in the meanwhile the girl grows into an old maid, and the youth takes chambers—ogles at nursery-maids and becomes a man about town—a man whom it is dangerous to ask into your house, for his business is intrigue. The world might have had a happy couple; instead, it gets a woman fretful, nervous, fanciful, a plague to all around her. He becomes a sceptic in all virtue; a corrupter of the youth of both sexes; a curse in whatever domestic circle he penetrates. Even worse may

result. She may be deceived, and may die of a broken heart. He may rush from one folly to another; associate only with the vicious and depraved; bring disgrace and sorrow on himself and all around; and sink into an early grave. Our great cities show what becomes of men and women who do not marry. Worldly fathers and mothers advise not to marry till they can afford to keep a wife, and the boys spend on a harlot more in six months than would keep a wife six years. Hence it is, all wise men (like old Franklin) advocate early marriages; and that all our great men, with rare exceptions, have been men who married young. Wordsworth had only £100 a year when he first married. Lord Eldon was so poor that he had to go to Clare-market to buy sprats for supper. Coleridge and Southey I can’t find had any income at all when they got married. I question at any time whether Luther had more than fifty pounds a year. Our successful men in trade and commerce marry young, like George Stephenson, and the wife helps him up in the world in more ways than one. Dr. Smiles, in his little book on Self-Help, gives us the following anecdote respecting J. Flaxman and his wife—“Ann Denham was the name of his wife—and a cheery, bright-souled, noble woman she was. He believed that in marrying her he should be able to work with an intenser spirit; for, like him, she had a taste for poetry and art! and, besides, was an enthusiastic admirer of her husband’s genius. Yet when Sir Joshua Reynolds—himself a bachelor—met

Flaxman shortly after his marriage, he said to him, ‘So, Flaxman, I am told you are married; if so, sir, I tell you, you are ruined for an artist.’ Flaxman went straight home, sat down beside his wife, took her hand in his, and said, ‘Ann, I am ruined for an artist.’ ‘How so, John? How has it happened? And who has done it?’ ‘It happened,’ he replied, ‘in the church; and Ann Denham has done it.’ He then told her of Sir Joshua’s remark—whose opinion was well known, and has been often expressed, that if students would excel they must bring the whole powers of their mind to bear upon their art from the moment they rise until they go to bed; and also, that no man could be a great artist, unless he studied the grand works of Raffaelle, Michael Angelo, and others, at Rome and Florence. ‘And I,’ said Flaxman, drawing up his little figure to its full height, ‘I would be a great artist.’ ‘And a great artist you shall be,’ said his wife, ‘and visit Rome, too, if that be really necessary to make you great.’ ‘But how?’ asked Flaxman. ‘Work and economise,’ rejoined his brave wife: ‘I will never have it said that Ann Denham ruined John Flaxman for an artist.’ And so it was determined by the pair that the journey to Rome was to be made when their means would admit. ‘I will go to Rome,’ said Flaxman, ‘and show the President that wedlock is for man’s good rather than for his harm, and you, Ann, shall accompany me.’ He kept his word.”

By forbidding our young men and maidens matrimony,

we blast humanity in its very dawn. Fathers, you say you teach your sons prudence—you do nothing of the kind; your worldly-wise and clever son is already ruined for life. You will find him at Cremorne and at the Argyle Rooms. Your wretched worldly-wisdom taught him to avoid the snare of marrying young; and soon, if he is not involved in embarrassments which will last him a life, he is a blasé fellow; heartless, false; without a single generous sentiment or manly aim; he has—