Rambles in Womanland

by Max O'Rell

One said to me: 'The ideal husband is the one who devotes his life to his wife, who makes her the first consideration in all his thoughts and acts, who understands that she is the aim of everything which he undertakes, and that he should use all the resources that Nature has placed in his mind and Fortune has put in his hands in order that she may be happy and remain long beautiful.'

I need not say that this was the opinion of a young girl who had only just made her début in society. Nor do I need say that the following came from the lips of a married woman—one, however, whom I guarantee to be in the possession of all the womanly virtues likely to make a husband most satisfied with his lot.

'The ideal husband,' she said, 'is the one who lets his wife alone, who does not interfere with her household duties or any of her little womanly fads, who is not always paying her compliments or besieging her with advice, and who is not always by her side or behind her back, who seldom addresses her reproaches, and never reminds her of what he has done to deserve her gratitude, who is not fussy, fidgety, or a bore of a model of propriety and virtue.

'When I was a young girl I dreamed of matrimony as a sweet state of slavery. Now I shout for liberty—liberty for him and liberty for me. I do not mean to say, of course, that man and wife should live apart and not care one what the other does. No, no; but I firmly believe that we should remain at a respectful distance from the objects which we want to see to advantage and admire.

'A woman should never allow even the most loving and beloved of husbands to be constantly making love to her. One may suffer from abundance of wealth. A great deal of discretion and a certain amount of respect between married people are sure to secure the duration and the solidity of their affection. Those who live at too close quarters are sure to part one day or the other.'

Here is another, with less philosophy, but a good deal of what I might call paradoxical psychology:

'The ideal husband,' said to me a woman married to a French painter on the road to celebrity, 'is the one who is not a man of genius. Nothing monopolizes a man like a great talent for writing, painting, or even business; he belongs to his muse, his art, or his figures. His thoughts are absorbed, and he has very few, if any, left for the little creature who lives with him, not in the clouds, but by his side on this earth.

'When he returns from his dreams, he throws at her—poor inferior being!—a glance of pity, if not of contempt. My ideal husband is a man who can live for me as I am ready to live for him, and who can do without a mistress, whether that mistress be called Literature, Art, or Commerce. I love great men, great poets, great painters or sculptors, but I would not have a great man for a husband; nay, furthermore, I should like to have a husband jealous of all the great men of my predilection in the world of fiction.'

A piquant little woman, not a bit beautiful, but absolutely charming and the embodiment of amiability and cheerfulness, said to me:

'The ideal husband shall not be a handsome man, but a gentlemanly one, with a keen sense of humour, cheerful, a laughing philosopher, and a man with a magnanimous turn of mind, who would never take advantage of a little trouble in which I might find myself entangled to say to me, "I told you so," but get me out of it quickly.'