“And so you intend to marry Lucy Warden—eh! Harry. What on earth has put you in such a notion of that girl?” said Charles Lowry, to his friend Henry Bowen, as they sat together, cracking almonds after dinner.
“And why not marry Lucy Warden?” quietly said his friend.
“Why? oh! because she’s not worth a sous; and besides I’ve heard she’s the daughter of a brick-layer. You know, any how, that her mother kept a little retail dry-goods store until an uncle left Mrs. Warden that annuity on which they now just manage to subsist.”
“A formidable array of evils, indeed; but still they do not dishearten me. As for money I do not look for it in a wife, because I should never feel independent if I was indebted to a bride for my bread. Besides an heiress is generally educated in such expensive habits that it requires a fortune to satisfy her luxurious wishes. As a mere matter of business this marrying for money is nine times out of ten a losing speculation. You are forced to live according to your wife’s former style, and being thus led into expenses which your income will not afford, you too often end by becoming bankrupt. Then, too late, you discover that your wife is fit only for a parlor; she becomes peevish, or wretched, or sick, and perhaps all together. Domestic felicity is at an end when this occurs—”
“But her birth!”
“A still more nonsensical objection. It is one of the prejudices of the old colonial times, and was imported from England by the servile adorers of rank, who came over the Atlantic to assume airs in the provinces which they dared not assume at home, and to sneer at the honester members of society, who, instead of being like themselves drones in the public hive, earned their bread fairly. It is this latter class to which our country is indebted for its subsequent prosperity—a prosperity which all the aristocrats of Europe could not have bestowed upon it. The revolution, while it made us politically equal, did not destroy this social aristocracy. The same exclusiveness prevails now as then, but with even more injustice, for it is opposed to the whole spirit of our republican institutions. Nor is this all: the prejudice itself is ridiculous. How can people, who scarcely know their own ancestors beyond one or two generations, and whose blood has been derived from every nation and occupation on the globe, talk with any propriety of birth? Why, there is scarcely a man or woman of our acquaintance, who is not an example of this pie-bald ancestry. Take, for instance, Walter Hastings, who, you know, boasts of his family. I happen to know all about him, for he is a second cousin to myself. His father made a fortune, and married into our family. But who was he? The son of a German redemptioner. Hastings’ mother, it is true, is the grand-daughter of an English baron, and the sister—a far higher glory—of a signer of our Declaration of Independence. Such is a fair sample of our best families. Why I would undertake to furnish from the ancestry of any of them either a peasant or a peer, either a laborer or a drone. Birth, forsooth! The only persons who boast of it in this country are generally those who have the least claim even to an honest parentage; and the noisiest pretender to blood I ever met with was the grandson of a fellow who was hung fifty years ago for forgery.”
“Well, you’re really getting quite low in your notions, Harry—where, in the world, did you pick up such vulgar opinions? You, a gentleman and a lawyer, to marry such a girl! She’s pretty enough I grant—amiable no doubt—can sing and draw passably—and makes, I hear, a batch of bread, or does dirty house-work as well as a common kitchen girl. But perhaps that is what you want her for?”
“Your sneer aside, yes! It is because Lucy Warden is a good house-keeper, that I intend to marry her. Not that I would have a bride only because she could, as you say, make a batch of bread. Education, amiability, a refined mind, and lady-like manners are equally necessary. But a knowledge, and a practical one too, of housekeeping is no slight requisite in a good wife. I know such knowledge is scarce among our city ladies, but that is the very reason why I prize it so highly. Believe me, refinement is not incompatible with this knowledge.”
“Pshaw, Harry; but granting your position, what is the use of such knowledge?”
“It is of daily use. Servants will always impose on a mistress who knows nothing of her duties as the domestic head of the house. You are an importer; but how long, think you, would you prosper if you left every thing to the care of clerks, who would naturally take advantage of your carelessness to fleece you? A mistress of a house ought to oversee her establishment in person. This she cannot do unless—to use a mercantile phrase—she understands her business. If she does not do this, nothing will be well done. The whole evil, believe me, arises from the desire of our women to ape the extravagance of the English female nobility, whose immense wealth allows them to employ substitutes to oversee their domestic establishments. But even had we incomes of hundreds of thousands of dollars we could not carry out the plan, owing to the total absence of good servants of this character in our country; and in this opinion I am borne out by Combe, Hamilton, two of the most observant and just of English travellers.”