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Page 20
And the harmless widows who are suddenly robbed of their protector.
Ah, how some of them are made to suffer! Little Amelia Sedley, in
"Vanity Fair," has her sufferings and indignities painted by a
master-hand, and there is not a line thickened or darkened overmuch.
The miserable tale of the cheap lodgings, and the insults which the
poor girl had flung at her because, in the passion of her love, she
spent trifling sums on her boy--how actual it all seems! The widow who
may have held her head high in her days of prosperity, soon receives
lessons from women: they call it teaching her what is her proper
place. Those good and discreet ladies have a notion that their conduct
is full of propriety and discretion and sound sense; but how they make
their sisters suffer--ah, how they make the poor things suffer! I
believe that, if any improvident man could see, in a keenly vivid
dream, a vision of his wife's future after his death, he would stint
himself of anything rather than run the risk of having to reflect on
his death-bed that he had failed to do his best for those who loved
him. Women sometimes out of pure wantonness try to exasperate a man so
that he falls into courses which bring his end swiftly. Could those
foolish ones only see their own fate when the doom of being down in
the world came upon them, they would strain every nerve in their
bodies so that their husband's life and powers of work might be spared
to the last possible hour.
What can the man do who is down? Frankly, nothing, unless his strength
holds. I advise such a one never to seek for help from any one but
himself, and never to try for any of the employments which are
supposed to be "easy." Cool neglect, insulting compassion, lying
promises, evasive and complimentary nothings--these will be his
portion. If he cannot perform any skilled labour, let him run the risk
of seeming degraded; and, if he has to push a trade in matches or
flowers, let him rather do that than bear the more or less kindly
flouts which meet the supplicant. To all who are young and strong I
would say, "Live to-day as though to-morrow you might be ruined--or
dead."
VII.
ILL-ASSORTED MARRIAGES.
The people who joke and talk lightly about marriage do not seem to
have the faintest rational conception of the awful nature of the
subject. Awful it is; and, as serious men go through life, they become
more and more impressed with the momentous results which depend on the
choice made by a man or woman. A lad of nineteen lightly engages
himself; he knows nothing of the gloom, the terror, the sordid horror
of the fate that lies before him; and the unhappy girl is equally
ignorant. In fourteen years the actual substance of that young
fellow's very body is twice completely changed; he is a man utterly
different from the boy who contracted the marriage; there is not a
muscle or a thought in common between the boy and the man--yet the man
takes all the consequences of the boy's act. Supposing that the pair
are well matched, life goes on happily enough for them; but, alas, if
the man or the woman has to wake up and face the ghastly results of a
mistake, then there is a tragedy of the direst order! Let us suppose
that the lad is cultured and ambitious, and that he is attracted at
first by a rosy face or pretty figure only; supposing that he is thus
early bound to a vulgar commonplace woman, the consequences when the
woman happens to have a powerful will and an unscrupulous tongue are
almost too dreadful to be pictured in words.
Let no young folk fancy that mind counts for nothing in marriage. A
man must have congenial company, or he will fly to company that is
uncongenial; he must have joy of some kind, or he will fall into
despair. The company and the joy can best be supplied by the wife to
the husband, and by the husband to the wife. If the woman is dull and
trivial, then her husband soon begins to neglect her; if she is meek
and submissive, the neglect does not rouse her, and there are no
violent consequences; but it is awful to think of the poor creature
who sits at home and dimly wonders in the depth of her simple soul
what can have happened to change the man who loved her. She has no
resources--she can only love; she is perhaps kindly enough--yet she is
punished only because she and her lad made a blundering choice before
their judgments were formed. But, if the woman is spirited and
aggressive, then the lookers-on see part of a hideous game which might
well frighten the bravest into celibacy. She is self-assertive, she
desires--very rightly--to be first, and at the first symptom of a
slight from her husband she begins the process of nagging. The man is
refined, and the coarseness which he did not perceive before marriage
strikes him like a venomed point now; he replies fiercely, and perhaps
shows contempt; then the woman tries the effect of weeping. Unhappily
the tears are more exasperating than the scolding, and the quarrel
ends by the man rushing from the house. Then for the first time the
pair find that they have to deal with the whole forces of society; in
their rage they would gladly part and meet no more--or they think
so--but inexorable society steps in and declares that the alliance is
fixed until death or rascality looses it. For a little while the
estrangement lasts, and then there is a reconciliation, after which
all goes well for a time. But the shocking thing about the
ill-assorted marriage is that the estrangements grow longer and longer
and the quarrels ever more bitter. Even children do but little to
reconcile the jarring claims of man and wife, for they are a sign of
the lasting shackle which each of the miserable beings wants to break.
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