Opinions of the Typical Englishman To the Editor of the Pall Mall
Gazette,
"Sir:-If it is not too late to answer some of the arguments brought to bear on 'Easy Divorce,' as Lady Beecham calls it, or, as I prefer to call it, the proposed equalisation of the Divorce Laws on which she wrote recently, I would like to know how far the sentiments of the 'Typical Englishman' mentioned in the article are known to Lady Beecham.
"Among many great men she mentions Gladstone. Now, his opinion on the subject is surely well known, as in 1857 he supported an amendment moved by Mr. H. Drummond that infidelity alone on the part of a husband should entitle the wife to the dissolution of the marriage. Gladstone's speech was, I believe, an earnest attack upon the injustice of the Divorce Bill to women.
"An able advocate, Sir Charles Russell, once described the action of a man whose wife was seeking a divorce from him in the following strong terms: 'This was not a case of mere vulgar acts of infidelity, but it was that of a man whose continued course of conduct, consistent only in its profligacy and heartlessness, had brought the wife into a condition by which the marriage tie had become a galling chain.'
"If the conduct of the respondent did not amount to legal cruelty, the law was in an anomalous state, and did emphasize in a marked manner the inequality which existed in the laws relating to these matters between men and women.
"George Eliot once wrote: 'These things are often unknown to the world; for there is much pain that is quite noiseless, and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence."
"Thackeray in 'The Newcomes' speaks of 'matrimonial crimes where the woman is not felled by the actual fist, though she staggers and sinks under the blows quite as cruel and effectual, where with old wounds still unhealed, she strives to hide under a smiling face to the world.'
"How anyone can find it in their heart to state that incurable insanity should not be ground for divorce is inexplicable to me; but as it is well known that partial insanity even is not, and I know of an instance of a man who went twice into an asylum and came back twice to his wife, the poor woman bearing him on each occasion another child. Even this is not a ground for divorce. The Cruelty in refusing the injured person her freedom seems almost incredible."
The first wrong step between young people is impossible to avoid, since during courtship both wear masks, each trying to impress the other that he or she is a paragon of all virtues. The net result is, that the truth often becomes a horrible revelation immediately after the wedding ceremony. Unhappy and mismated marriages, without means of rectification, are the curse of civilization, the living, gnawing cancer of society.
In 1913, Nevada, under the lash of exaggerated newspaper notoriety, enacted a law changing the period of residence for the plaintiff in divorce actions from six months to one year. From Nevada's territorial existence down to that time it had been six months.