151. On what trifles turn the great events in the life of man! If I had received a cool letter from my intended wife; if I had only heard a rumour of any thing from which fickleness in her might have been inferred; if I had found in her any, even the smallest, abatement of affection; if she had but let go any one of the hundred strings by which she held my heart: if any of these, never would the world have heard of me. Young as I was; able as I was as a soldier; proud as I was of the admiration and commendations of which I was the object; fond as I was, too, of the command, which, at so early an age, my rare conduct and great natural talents had given me; sanguine as was my mind, and brilliant as were my prospects: yet I had seen so much of the meannesses, the unjust partialities, the insolent pomposity, the disgusting dissipations of that way of life, that I was weary of it: I longed, exchanging my fine laced coat for the Yankee farmer's home-spun, to be where I should never behold the supple crouch of servility, and never hear the hectoring voice of authority, again; and, on the lonely banks of this branch-covered creek, which contained (she out of the question) every thing congenial to my taste and dear to my heart, I, unapplauded, unfeared, unenvied and uncalumniated, should have lived and died.
LETTER IV
TO A HUSBAND
152. It is in this capacity that your conduct will have the greatest effect on your happiness; and a great deal will depend on the manner in which you begin. I am to suppose that you have made a good choice; but a good young woman may be made, by a weak, a harsh, a neglectful, an extravagant, or a profligate husband, a really bad wife and mother. All in a wife, beyond her own natural disposition and education is, nine times out of ten, the work of her husband.
153. The first thing of all, be the rank in life what it may, is to convince her of the necessity of moderation in expense; and to make her clearly see the justice of beginning to act upon the presumption, that there are children coming, that they are to be provided for, and that she is to assist in the making of that provision. Legally speaking, we have a right to do what we please with our own property, which, however, is not our own, unless it exceed our debts. And, morally speaking, we, at the moment of our marriage, contract a debt with the naturally to be expected fruit of it; and, therefore (reserving further remarks upon this subject till I come to speak of the education of children), the scale of expense should, at the beginning, be as low as that of which a due attention to rank in life will admit.
154. The great danger of all is, beginning with servants, or a servant. Where there are riches, or where the business is so great as to demand help in the carrying on of the affairs of a house, one or more female servants must be kept; but, where the work of a house can be done by one pair of hands, why should there be two; especially as you cannot have the hands without having the mouth, and, which is frequently not less costly, inconvenient and injurious, the tongue? When children come, there must, at times, be some foreign aid; but, until then, what need can the wife of a young tradesman, or even farmer (unless the family be great) have of a servant? The wife is young, and why is she not to work as well as the husband? What justice is there in wanting you to keep two women instead of one? You have not married them both in form; but, if they be inseparable, you have married them in substance; and if you are free from the crime of bigamy, you have the far most burthensome part of its consequences.
155. I am well aware of the unpopularity of this doctrine; well aware of its hostility to prevalent habits; well aware that almost every tradesman and every farmer, though with scarcely a shilling to call his own; and that every clerk, and every such person, begins by keeping a servant, and that the latter is generally provided before the wife be installed: I am well aware of all this; but knowing, from long and attentive observation, that it is the great bane of the marriage life; the great cause of that penury, and of those numerous and tormenting embarrassments, amidst which conjugal felicity can seldom long be kept alive, I give the advice, and state the reasons on which it was founded.
156. In London, or near it, a maid servant cannot be kept at an expense so low as that of thirty pounds a year; for, besides her wages, board and lodging, there must be a fire solely for her; or she must sit with the husband and wife, hear every word that passes between them, and between them and their friends; which will, of course, greatly add to the pleasures of their fire-side! To keep her tongue still would be impossible, and, indeed, unreasonable; and if, as may frequently happen, she be prettier than the wife, she will know how to give the suitable interpretation to the looks which, to a next to a certainty, she will occasionally get from him, whom, as it were in mockery, she calls by the name of 'master.' This is almost downright bigamy; but this can never do; and, therefore, she must have a fire to herself. Besides the blaze of coals, however, there is another sort of flame that she will inevitably covet. She will by no means be sparing of the coals; but, well fed and well lodged, as she will be, whatever you may be, she will naturally sigh for the fire of love, for which she carries in her bosom a match always ready prepared. In plain language, you have a man to keep, a part, at least, of every week; and the leg of lamb, which might have lasted you and your wife for three days, will, by this gentleman's sighs, be borne away in one. Shut the door against this intruder; out she goes herself; and, if she go empty-handed, she is no true Christian, or, at least, will not be looked upon as such by the charitable friend at whose house she meets the longing soul, dying partly with love and partly with hunger.
157. The cost, altogether, is nearer fifty pounds a year than thirty. How many thousands of tradesmen and clerks, and the like, who might have passed through life without a single embarrassment, have lived in continual trouble and fear, and found a premature grave, from this very cause, and this cause alone! When I, on my return from America, in 1800, lived a short time in Saint James's Street, following my habit of early rising, I used to see the servant maids, at almost every house, dispensing charity at the expense of their masters, long before they, good men, opened their eyes, who thus did deeds of benevolence, not only without boasting of them, but without knowing of them. Meat, bread, cheese, butter, coals, candles; all came with equal freedom from these liberal hands. I have observed the same, in my early walks and rides, in every part of this great place and its environs. Where there is one servant it is worse than where there are two or more; for, happily for their employers, they do not always agree. So that the oppression is most heavy on those who are the least able to bear it: and particularly on clerk, and such like people, whose wives seem to think, that, because the husband's work is of a genteel description, they ought to live the life of ladies. Poor fellows! their work is not hard and rough, to be sure; but, it is work, and work for many hours too, and painful enough; and as to their income, it scarcely exceeds, on an average, the double, at any rate, of that of a journeyman carpenter, bricklayer, or tailor.