Milverton. Well, and what is it in travelling that makes people disagree? Not direct selfishness, but injudicious management; stupid regrets, for instance, at things not being different from what they are, or from what they might have been, if “the other route” had been chosen; fellow-travellers punishing each other with each other’s tastes; getting stock subjects of disputation; laughing unseasonably at each other’s vexations and discomforts; and endeavouring to settle everything by the force of sufficient reason, instead of by some authorised will, or by tossing up. Thus, in the short time of a journey, almost all modes and causes of human disagreement are brought into action.
Ellesmere. My favourite one not being the least—over-much of each other’s company.
For my part, I think one of the greatest bores of companionship is, not merely that people wish to fit tastes and notions on you just as they might the first pair of ready-made shoes they meet with, a process amusing enough to the bystander, but exquisitely uncomfortable to the person being ready-shod: but that they bore you with never-ending talk about their pursuits, even when they know that you do not work in the same groove with them, and that they cannot hope to make you do so.
Dunsford. Nobody can accuse you of that fault, Ellesmere: I never heard you dilate much upon anything that interested you, though I have known you have some pet subject, and to be working at it for months. But this comes of your coldness of nature.
Ellesmere. Well, it might bear a more favourable construction. But to go back to the essay. It only contemplates the fact of people living together as equals, if we may so say; but in general, of course, you must add some other relationship or connection than that of merely being together.
Milverton. I had not overlooked that; but there are certain general rules in the matter that may be applied to nearly all relationship, just as I have taken that one from Johnson, applied by him to married life, about not endeavouring to settle all things by reasoning, and have given it a general application which, I believe, it will bear.
Ellesmere. There is one thing that I should think must often make women very unreasonable and unpleasant companions. Oh, you may both hold up your hands and eyes, but I am not married, and can say what I please. Of course you put on the proper official look of astonishment; and I will duly report it. But I was going to say that Chivalry, which has doubtless done a great deal of good, has also done a great deal of harm. Women may talk the greatest unreason out of doors, and nobody kindly informs them that it is unreason. They do not talk much before clever men, and when they do, their words are humoured and dandled as children’s sayings are. Now, I should fancy—mind, I do not want either of you to say that my fancy is otherwise than quite unreasonable—I should fancy that when women have to hear reason at home it must sound odd to them. The truth is, you know, we cannot pet anything much without doing it mischief. You cannot pet the intellect, any more than the will, without injuring it. Well then, again, if you put people upon a pedestal and do a great deal of worship around them, I cannot think but the will in such cases must become rather corrupted, and that lessons of obedience must fall rather harshly—
Dunsford. Why, you Mahometan, you Turk of a lawyer—would you do away with all the high things of courtesy, tenderness for the weaker, and—
Milverton. No, I see what he means; and there is something in it. Many a woman is brought up in unreason and self-will from these causes that he has given, as many a man from other causes; but there is one great corrective that he has omitted, and which is, that all forms, fashions, and outward things have a tendency to go down before realities when they come hand to hand together. Knowledge and judgment prevail. Governing is apt to fall to the right person in private as in public affairs.
Ellesmere. Those who give way in public affairs, and let the men who can do a thing do it, are so far wise that they know what is to be done, mostly. But the very things I am arguing against are the unreason and self-will, which being constantly pampered, do not appreciate reason or just sway. Besides, is there not a force in ill-humour and unreason to which you constantly see the wisest bend? You will come round to my opinion some day. I do not want, though, to convince you. It is no business of mine.