VI. ABOUT MARRIAGE.

The query, Is marriage a failure? which has been echoing from shore to shore, and enjoying, more or less seriously, the attention of thousands of English-speaking men and women, is, after all, only another form of that other popular query: Is life worth the living? In the one case and in the other, it is not so much a question of accepting or refusing the inevitable, but of how to use certain conditions imposed upon us by the laws of our being. For, let it be a failure, or let it be a success, marriage is an institution that has come to stay; and to vote it down would be about as insane and suicidal a policy as to say: The air is a failure; it is raw and creepy, and causes rheumatism, catarrh, phthisis and all sorts of other evils; let us, then, hermetically seal our doors and windows, and eliminate air from our scheme of living. Doubtless we could follow this wise counsel, and doubtless we should soon be cured of all the ills that air produces and flesh is heir to. Pardon the pun; but I just read that no woman had sufficient sense of humor to make a pun, so I was constrained by the innate contrariness of woman to make as vile a one as any man could.

Well, then, the mutual attraction of the sexes, and the impulses of human nature being what they are, and have been since Adam wooed Eve as the crowning delight of Paradise, and Cain went out and found himself a wife as the surest mitigation of the curse laid upon him, the association of a man and woman who find each other congenial and attractive will doubtless continue to be the rule of life until life shall be no more; and as we Anglo Saxon-Latins claim to be the flower and fruit and crown of civilization, it is not worth discussing whether we shall revert to the condition of the lowest savages and cease to dignify and solemnize these unions by the accepted forms of marriage.

Probably no woman, however “emancipated,” intends seriously to inquire whether we shall do away with marriage, although marriage stands confessed as the parent of much misery and discontent. No woman possessed of average common sense, setting aside such minor virtues as purity, delicacy and self-respect, would advocate the abrogation of a system which is her own protection against the degradation of a deserted old age.

Men are charming creatures, of course—full of honor, chivalry, loyalty, and all the rest of the make up of a Bayard; but all the same, I doubt if it would be easy to find, among my somewhat extensive acquaintance, five men who would, if marriage were proved a failure and dismissed from the scheme, remain contentedly constant to the woman who was at twenty so entirely to their taste, and is now at fifty or sixty so irritating, so tiresome, so incompatible, so old a story. That is, he does not apply to her all these disparaging adjectives, first, because she is his wife, bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, and every man shrinks from disparaging his own possessions; and, secondly, because the knowledge that any condition is irrevocable induces acquiescence; and although in exceptional cases the marriage tie must be broken in form as well as in truth, the general rule is that it endures while life does, and both husband and wife shut their eyes to each other’s defects with a complaisance quite out of the question were marriage pronounced a failure and done away with.

An unloved and neglected wife is doubtless a very pitiable and lamentable object; but surely not nearly so much so as the woman who is no longer loved and no longer sought by him to whom she has given all, and who has not a wife’s claim to at least outward respect and an honorable position in his house.

Of course, then, the question is not, Has marriage proved a failure, and shall it be discarded? but, Is marriage a failure under its present conditions, and how shall we improve them?

Well, why and how is it a failure? Several thousand gentle or shrewish, sweet or raspy feminine voices answer in tumultuous chorus: He is not sympathetic! He is not attentive! He is requiring! He is a brute! He is a bear! He is a pig! He laughs at me and scoffs at what he cannot understand! He is jealous! He is mean, and stints me almost to pauperism! He is devoted to other women, and spends more than he has upon his own amusements! He is always away, and leaves me alone at home! He never wants to stir from home, and keeps me chained to his side! etc.

From the other side rises a chorus ranging from basso profundo to thinnest tenor:

She’s always nagging; there’s no peace for a man inside his own house! She’s always taken up with some other fellow, and wants me to efface myself! She thinks wrappers and crimping pins good enough for me, and lays herself out for the street and strangers! She neglects the poor kids, and they’re tumbling up any way! She can’t manage her house, and it’s the most comfortless hole I know of! She won’t take the trouble to keep a house, and makes me live in a boarding house, which I detest! She’d ruin a Rothschild! She’s always preaching poverty and grudges me a cigar or a glass of beer! She makes it so unpleasant if I bring a man home to dinner that I have offended half my old friends! She’s forever asking Tom, Dick and Harry to dinner and when I come home tired and used up I’ve got to put on my black clothes and make talk for a parcel of fools, instead of eating my dinner in peace!

And so it goes, and so it goes, the world over, or at least our world over, and both men and women are sick at heart, and worn and weary with the unending din of battle, and some wise head starts up and proposes scuttling the ship to drown the rats, and a crowd of desperate sisters cry Amen, and the stronger sex put their hands in their pockets and say, Do it if you like; we can stand it if you can.

But let common sense be praised, there is yet a goodly majority who cry, Scuttle the ship! Nonsense! Let’s get rid of the rats, and save the ship!

How? Oh, in various ways. There is no royal road to learning, neither is there to contentment nor to the right answer to the great conundrum of life; but it is most fortunately true that many roads lead to the desired goal, and many answers are the right one. Let us suggest a few, and leave it to our readers, both men and women, to evolve others suited to their own conditions. One great truth we would, however, suggest as suited to all possible cases. Marriage is a full and equal partnership, and each member is bound to rank his partner’s interest as equal with his own. Let every business man ask himself just here if he treats his wife as “squarely” in all respects as he treats his partner, and expects his partner to treat him; and if he doesn’t, let him begin to-day and try the experiment of showing her the same respect, confidence and care for her opinion that he does his brother man. Most women are both pleased and touched at being thus treated by the man who claims any sort of authority over them, whether fathers, brothers, husbands or what not; and the better sort of woman feels her honor engaged to prove herself worthy of such confidence and respect.

To women, especially housekeepers, let me tell a mot heard this summer. Two men were speaking of the shortcomings of a youthful landlord, whose tender mercies had been rather cruel upon them and their families, and one said: “The trouble with that fellow is, he hasn’t yet got it into his head that he keeps a hotel, not to please himself, but to please his patrons, and so rake in the ducats.”

Of course, the parallel does not go upon all-fours; for the wife does keep her house in the manner that pleases herself, and her husband is not a patron, but a beloved and honored guest, as well as equal partner in the property; but still it is the woman who “keeps” the domestic hotel, and should so manage it as to combine her own pleasure with her husband’s comfort, tastes and that peace which is to the average man the sine qua non of domestic happiness.

Another point which has impressed itself upon my mind in considering my world, since this question has so vigorously arisen in its center, is this: The people who marry and the people who complain are generally young—that is to say, they marry before twenty-five and they complain before thirty. To be sure, having begun to complain at this age, they keep on complaining for a good many years, partly from the love of a grievance inherent in human nature, and partly because, having made up their minds that the path is thorny, they look out for the thorns, and take pains to scratch themselves on each one. But the discontent begins in youth—let us say, during the first five years of matrimony—and it should be treated as one of the diseases incident to youth, instead of being allowed to become chronic.

Young people of both sexes have a most exaggerated idea of their own importance. Cæsar must have been young, even for his years, when he so naïvely remarked: “The world was made for Cæsar;” but I have seldom met either girl or man under twenty-five who was not obviously under the same impression, and it is in the height of this delusion that the two come together as man and wife—often with the same result as when the MacGregor and the Campbell, with their following, met in the narrow streets of Edinburgh, and, each claiming the “Crown of the Causeway” as his undoubted right, passed the rest of the day in fighting out the question, until each chieftain, sorely wounded, was carried to his own quarters, resolved to fight it out again, and yet again while life lasted.

No, my dear girl, and also my dear boy, the world was not made for either of you—not even the little world of the new life you have just entered upon with such flourish of trumpets. The house is not yours, nor yours, no matter in whose name the title deeds are drawn. It is ours, and must be managed in scrupulous consideration of our tastes and wishes and comfort.

Just at first this will be very easy, for in the case of discrepant tastes it is so delicious in the honeymoon to say: Have it your own way, darling; what pleases you, pleases me; and to reply: No, no, have it your way; for isn’t your way my way, now, love?

Very nice for the honeymoon, but the secret, is to keep it up, and not to allow all the concessions to come from one side; but remember that, with all the “darlings” and “loves” thrown in, this is a very practical business partnership upon which you are entering, and that mutual respect, mutual concessions, and mutual interests are the basis of the concern.

Neither of you is going to be quite satisfied, neither is going to be quite happy; both are going to meet with some severe disappointments in each other and in the new life. But the secret of preventing the marriage business becoming a failure is the same largely influencing all other business partnerships; hostility to your partner means injury to your mutual interests, and, if that partner turn out not quite the sort of companion you expected, make the best instead of the worst of him, and seek, by mutual concession and consideration, to work harmoniously together for what you know to be your mutual interest and profit in the heyday of life, and the assured comfort and repose of old age.