The Intellectual Life

by Philip Gilbert Hamerton

But this kind of intellectual deviation, you may answer, is not strictly the consequence of marriage, quâ marriage; it is one of the consequences of a degree of relative poverty, produced by the larger expenditure of married life, but which might be just as easily produced by a certain degree of money-pressure in the condition of a bachelor. Let me therefore point out a kind of deviation which may be as frequently observed in rich marriages as in poor ones. Suppose the case of a bachelor with a small but perfectly independent income amounting to some hundreds a year, who is devoted to intellectual pursuits, and spends his time in study or with cultivated friends of his own, choosing friends whose society is an encouragement and a help. Suppose that this man makes an exceedingly prudent marriage, with a rich woman, you may safely predict, in this instance, intellectual deviations of a kind perilous to the highest culture. He will have new calls upon his time, his society will no longer be entirely of his own choosing, he will no longer be able to devote himself with absolute singleness of purpose to studies from which his wife must necessarily be excluded. If he were to continue faithful to his old habits, and shut himself up every day in his library or laboratory, or set out on frequent scientific expeditions, his wife would either be a lady of quite extraordinary perfection of temper, or else entirely indifferent in her feelings towards him, if she did not regard his pursuits with quickly-increasing jealousy. She would think, and justifiably think, that he ought to give more of his time to the enjoyment of her society, that he ought to be more by her side in the carriage and in the drawing-room, and if he loved her he would yield to these kindly and reasonable wishes. He would spend many hours of every day in a manner not profitable to his great pursuits, and many weeks of every year in visits to her friends. His position would be even less favorable to study in some respects than that of a professional man. It would be difficult for him, if an amateur artist, to give that unremitting attention to painting which the professional painter gives. He could not say, “I do this for you and for our children;” he could only say, “I do it for my own pleasure,” which is not so graceful an excuse. As a bachelor, he might work as professional people work, but his marriage would strongly accentuate the amateur character of his position. It is possible that if his labors had won great fame the lady might bear the separation more easily, for ladies always take a noble pride in the celebrity of their husbands; but the best and worthiest intellectual labor often brings no fame whatever, and notoriety is a mere accident of some departments of the intellectual life, and not its ultimate object.

George Sand, in her admirable novel “Valvèdre,” has depicted a situation of this kind with the most careful delicacy of touch. Valvèdre was a man of science, who attempted to continue the labors of his intellectual life after marriage had united him to a lady incapable of sharing them. The reader pities both, and sympathizes with both. It is hard, on the one hand, that a man endowed by nature with great talents for scientific work should not go on with a career already gloriously begun; and yet, on the other hand, a woman who is so frequently abandoned for science may blamelessly feel some jealousy of science.

Valvèdre, in narrating the story of his unhappy wedded life, said that Alida wished to have at her orders a perfect gentleman to accompany her, but that he felt in himself a more serious ambition. He had not aimed at fame, but he had thought it possible to become a useful servant, bringing his share of patient and courageous seekings to the edifice of the sciences. He had hoped that Alida would understand this. “’There is time enough for everything,’ she said, still retaining him in the useless wandering life that she had chosen. ‘Perhaps,’ he answered, ‘but on condition that I lose no more of it; and it is not in this wandering life, cut to pieces by a thousand unforeseen interruptions, that I can make the hours yield their profit.’

“’Ah! we come to the point!’ exclaimed Alida impetuously. ‘You wish to leave me, and to travel alone in impossible regions.’

“’No, I will work near you and abandon certain observations which it would be necessary to make at too great a distance, but you also will sacrifice something: we will not see so many idle people, we will settle somewhere for a fixed time. It shall be where you will, and if the place does not suit you, we will try another; but from time to time you will permit me a phase of sedentary work.’

“’Yes, yes, you want to live for yourself alone; you have lived enough for me. I understand; your love is satiated and at an end.’

“Nothing could conquer her conviction that study was her rival, and that love was only possible in idleness.

“’To love is everything,’ she said; ‘and he who loves has not time to concern himself with anything else. Whilst the husband is intoxicating himself with the marvels of science, the wife languishes and dies. It is the destiny which awaits me; and since I am a burden to you, I should do better to die at once.’

“A little later Valvèdre ventured to hint something about work, hoping to conquer his wife’s ennui, on which she proclaimed the hatred of work as a sacred right of her nature and position.

“’Nobody ever taught me to work,’ she said, ‘and I did not marry under a promise to begin again at the a, b, c of things. Whatever I know I have learned by intuition, by reading without aim or method. I am a woman; my destiny is to love my husband and bring up children. It is very strange that my husband should be the person who counsels me to think of something better.’”