CHAPTER XIV
MARRIAGE
The beautiful saying of Newton, that he felt like a child who had been picking up a few pebbles on the shore of the great ocean of undiscovered truth, may well occur to any writer who attempts to say something on the vast subject of marriage. The infinite variety of circumstances and characters affects it in infinitely various ways, and all that can here be done is to collect a few somewhat isolated and miscellaneous remarks upon it. Yet it is a subject which cannot be omitted in a book like this. In numerous cases it is the great turning-point of a life, and in all cases when it takes place it is one of the most important of its events. Whatever else marriage may do or fail to do, it never leaves a man unchanged. His intellect, his character, his happiness, his way of looking on the world, will all be influenced by it. If it does not raise or strengthen him it will lower or weaken. If it does not deepen happiness it will impair it. It brings with it duties, interests, habits, hopes, cares, sorrows, and joys that will penetrate into every fissure of his nature and modify the whole course of his life.
It is strange to think with how much levity and how little knowledge a contract which is so indissoluble and at the same time so momentous is constantly assumed; sometimes under the influence of a blinding passion and at an age when life is still looked upon as a romance or an idyll; sometimes as a matter of mere ambition and calculation, through a desire for wealth or title or position. Men and women rely on the force of habit and necessity to accommodate themselves to conditions they have never really understood or realised.
In most cases different motives combine, though in different degrees. Sometimes an overpowering affection for the person is the strongest motive and eclipses all others. Sometimes the main motive to marriage is a desire to be married. It is to obtain a settled household and position; to be relieved from the 'unchartered freedom' and the 'vague desires' of a lonely life; to find some object of affection; to acquire the steady habits and the exemption from household cares which are essential to a career; to perpetuate a race; perhaps to escape from family discomforts, or to introduce a new and happy influence into a family. With these motives a real affection for a particular person is united, but it is not of such a character as to preclude choice, judgment, comparison, and a consideration of worldly advantages.
It is a wise saying of Swift that there would be fewer unhappy marriages in the world if women thought less of making nets and more of making cages. The qualities that attract, fascinate, and dazzle are often widely different from those which are essential to a happy marriage. Sometimes they are distinctly hostile to it. More frequently they conduce to it, but only in an inferior or subsidiary degree. The turn of mind and character that makes the accomplished flirt is certainly not that which promises best for the happiness of a married life; and distinguished beauty, brilliant talents, and the heroic qualities that play a great part in the affairs of life, and shine conspicuously in the social sphere, sink into a minor place among the elements of married happiness. In marriage the identification of two lives is so complete that it brings every faculty and gift into play, but in degrees and proportions very different from public life or casual intercourse and relations. The most essential are often wanting in a brilliant life, and are largely developed in lives and characters that rise little, if at all, above the commonplace. In the words of a very shrewd man of the world: 'Before marriage the shape, the figure, the complexion carry all before them; after marriage the mind and character unexpectedly claim their share, and that the largest, of importance.'[68]
The relation is one of the closest intimacy and confidence, and if the identity of interest between the two partners is not complete, each has an almost immeasurable power of injuring the other. A moral basis of sterling qualities is of capital importance. A true, honest, and trustworthy nature, capable of self-sacrifice and self-restraint, should rank in the first line, and after that a kindly, equable, and contented temper, a power of sympathy, a habit of looking at the better and brighter side of men and things. Of intellectual qualities, judgment, tact, and order are perhaps the most valuable. Above almost all things, men should seek in marriage perfect sanity, and dread everything like hysteria. Beauty will continue to be a delight, though with much diminished power, but grace and the charm of manner will retain their full attraction to the last. They brighten in innumerable ways the little things of life, and life is mainly made up of little things, exposed to petty frictions, and requiring small decisions and small sacrifices. Wide interests and large appreciations are, in the marriage relation, more important than any great constructive or creative talent, and the power to soothe, to sympathise, to counsel, and to endure, than the highest qualities of the hero or the saint. It is by these alone that the married life attains its full measure of perfection.
'Tu mihi curarum requies, tu nocte vel atrâ