CHAPTER XI: HUSBANDS
To those about to marry a husband often seems not only a subject for affection and admiration but also for respect such as is given to an older and more experienced being. The young bride sees herself in imagination the possessor of a husband and children; she classifies them as belonging to separate orders of being. This I have found to be a mistake, but many of us drift so gently into a knowledge of the fact that we never notice how far we have wandered from our original conception. I realised the position quite suddenly one day. There was no falling apple nor boiling tea-kettle nor anything of that sort to start the theory in my head; it was not even as if I had been cutting down James’s trousers to fit Tom. I had been sitting with my hands in my lap, twiddling my thumbs, when all of a sudden this occurred to me. “James is to the other children what the thumb is to the other fingers. I have five fingers, the most powerful and useful of which stands apart from the others and is called the thumb. I have five children of which the first, the most powerful and useful, is called the husband. I have been deceived by instinct, by tradition, and by my parents, and it does not matter in the least; things are exactly as they were before. I will brush my husband’s hat and think no more about it.” But I did think more about it. I began also to notice other ladies in the same predicament, and marked how unconscious they were of their true position. I watched them feed and dress and exercise their first-born husbands, observing how they advised and reproved and deceived them for their good, how they encouraged them to work and were surprised when the work was recognised and paid for by the world. Mrs. Beehive’s husband was rather celebrated. He had built a great many public buildings, she once told me with pride and in just the same way as she described how baby had begun to take notice at an exceptionally early age. I could hear her, in imagination, say, “Yes, dear, very nice indeed,” while Mr. Beehive toiled and built like the dearest and humblest of beavers that he is, occasionally reviving his hopeful efforts to explain the nature of creation to the passive, mutton-headed creature who has, so to speak, swallowed him up and borne him anew for herself against his will. Another thing I discovered was that Ruth knew what a husband is and never told me. Servants are much sharper than their mistresses about these things. I suppose it is because they are not distracted by love and marriage. In their minds the master and the children are lumped together with other troublesome and necessary facts which girls have to put up with. (Whether they are “Mother’s” husband and children or the mistress’s makes very little difference.) They want a great deal more cooking than anyone would do for themselves, they tear their clothes, and are unpunctual and passionate. Sometimes they come home drunk and use up the money that is wanted for the house, or they speculate and gamble with it—silly fellows—instead of laying it out sensibly on bargains and outings. The only excuse they might have for doing the things they do—littering up the place with books and papers and musical instruments, screaming at one another without their hats in the street, or sitting in poky rooms in their shirt-sleeves—the only excuse they might have for all this folly would be to get well paid for it, so that they might spend at least part of the day sensibly in dancing and holiday-making. But not at all. They come home either as surly as bears or else perfectly limp and useless for conversation, they want more cooking done, and probably have less money on them than they took out. That is Ruth’s view I know, and it is that, secretly or avowed, of all the experienced women of good repute whom I know; those who think otherwise are not wives at heart, they are on a par with, if they are not actually, concubines. Soon after the day when I had twiddled my fingers and thought of these things, I began to notice all sorts of little contributory facts which fitted in with my newly formed theory. What Ruth said was nothing new, but I had never understood it before. I went into the kitchen, as usual, to go through the ceremony which Tom calls “seeing the beef.” I had been out alone the evening before, and had left a chop for James’s dinner.
“There is very little of the cold grouse left, m’m,” said Ruth, “the master’s been at it.”
“But I left a chop for him, didn’t I?” I asked.
“Yes’m, but he’s been at the grouse all the same. He would have it. You can see for yourself.”
Yes, I thought, if things were not as I now see they are, Ruth would have spoken differently. She would have said: “I am sorry, m’m, I can’t let you have the grouse to-day, but it was required for the master.” As it is, the very servants can evidently see no difference between the master wanting cold grouse and the boys raiding the pantry for tarts. Where is my husband? It appears that I have not got one. There is no such thing.
I then remembered with painful feelings of disillusionment something that Clara had said a few days before. “The master’s vests, m’m, they are all out at the elbows, with him yawning like that. He pulls them to pieces every time he raises his arms. I wonder could you speak to him about it?”
“He only yawns like that when he is doing very difficult work, Clara,” I said at the time. “We can’t help it; it wouldn’t do to interrupt him.”
“No, m’m, but if you could just mention it to him—you see it takes me all the evening to mend them when I ought to be getting on with the new curtains.” It was just as if she had said: “Of course, it is a pity he shouldn’t enjoy himself, and I would be the last to wish to stop it, but we can’t let his play stand in the way of what has to be done.”
The idea of a wife being the mother of her husband is an old one, but it has been too ambiguously put before the public, therefore girls still marry under a misapprehension. The misapprehension is of no consequence and hurts no one, but I cannot help thinking it would save disappointment if instead of nursing a delusion we could idealise a fact. If children were not made unnecessarily ridiculous the supposed husband would not be missed from the family group. If Mrs. Beehive gave to her younger children some of the dignity which she has, by reason of her nature, stripped from Mr. Beehive it would be a great deal better than throwing it away, and Mr. Beehive would suffer less from being placed in the same pigeon-hole with his own baby. Why should the mother of the family be the only one who is allowed any dignity or private life? She denies this, of course, and draws you a beautiful fancy picture of papa, the head of the house. She dresses him up for your benefit in all his war-paint of waistcoat and whiskers, but she does it in just the same spirit as she dresses up her son as a postman to please him while she gets on with her work. And the cruel thing is that she has so long ago stripped him of his natural fur and feathers that when she says “that is enough,” and folds away the waistcoat and whiskers in a drawer, he is exposed to the neighbours in a defenceless and absurd condition.