CHAPTER I

ADVICE TO YOUNG MARRIED PEOPLE

The great art, the great science of happiness, in matrimony especially, is never to expect of life more than it can give. Therefore, prepare your nest in such a way that the provisions will not be exhausted in a few weeks. From the very beginning, put on the brake, or the car will go too fast, and will get smashed.

Economize your caresses, rule your pa.s.sions so as never to make more promises than you can keep. You cannot always work unless now and then you take a rest, a holiday; neither can you always love unless you proceed quietly and occasionally take a holiday. Be sure that a holiday is as necessary to make you enjoy blissful times as it is to make you endure hard ones.

Do not for a moment believe that happiness in matrimony can go on for ever and ever without calculation, without a great display of diplomacy on the part of both husband and wife. Avoid being too constantly the lover of your wife, because the lover-husband is such a revelation to a woman that when the day arrives--the fatal day!--on which the husband remains alone and the lover has ceased to exist, your wife will forget everything you may have done for her: your constant attentions, your a.s.siduity to your profession or business, your forethought for her future and that for her children--all that will count for nothing when she realizes that the lover is gone.

Never allow a third person to interfere with your private affairs. Never confide your little troubles and grievances to anybody. Beware of the advising lady who would say to you: 'If I were in your place, I would not allow him to do this or to do that.' First of all, she is not in your place; secondly, she cannot be in your place, because she is neither in your heart nor in that of your husband.

You are the best judge--in fact, you are the only judge--of what is best for you to do in the presence of the many little difficulties that arise in married life. Whether you are happy or unhappy, keep the secrets of your married life to yourself; neither your happiness nor your misfortune will cause you to increase the number of your friends.

Indeed, if you are perfectly happy, it is only by remaining silent about it that you will get people to forgive you your happiness.

Accept a life of abnegation and devotion. There is in devotion a bliss which is unsurpa.s.sed. Devotion is perhaps the most refined and lofty form of selfishness; it raises you so much in your own estimation! It enslaves so surely the hearts of those whom you love! Devotion is not a sacrifice; it is a halo.

If I were a woman, I would give all the pleasures of life to witness the smile of my husband on a sick-bed as I entered the room to come and sit by his side with his hand in mine. In health, the man loves to feel that he is the protector of his wife; in sickness, there is no such arbour for him as the arms of the woman he loves.

CHAPTER II

THE MATRIMONIAL PROBLEM

From inquiries which I have made right and left I have arrived at this conclusion--that, out of a hundred couples who have got married, fifty would like to regain their freedom after six months of matrimonial life, twenty have come to the same opinion after a couple of years, ten more after a longer period, and about twenty are satisfied, though, in the last case, it often amounts to making the best of it. Not ten of them spend their leisure time in returning thanks that they got married--perhaps ten, but certainly not more.

And I will add this--that, among my friends and acquaintances, the couples who live most happily together are, without exception, those who made up their minds to be married most quickly, and did not attempt, during years and years of engagement, to try and learn how to know something of each other. I do not give this as a piece of advice to those about to marry. I simply state a fact, although I am prepared to admit that long engagements have never been the proper way of preparing for matrimony.

In my opinion, the majority of marriages will have a chance of turning out happily when the following will have become customs and laws:

1. Before a man makes love to a woman with the intention of asking her to become his wife, and before a woman allows a man to speak love to her, certainly before she accepts his offer of matrimony, both will have ascertained that there is no disease, moral or physical, of an hereditary nature in either family; that the man has been a good and devoted son, a cheerful brother, and an honest man in all his dealings, well spoken of by his employers or his acquaintances; that the girl is not an extravagant woman, and has, among her friends, the reputation of being amiable, cheerful, and a favourite at home; that both will have sufficient means to support themselves.

I will go further. I will say that it should not only be a custom to make inquiries about the antecedents of the parties, and their financial position, but a law, and a strict law, too, that would prevent couples from marrying who were likely to present society with undesirable children, or become a burden to the community. I believe that no emigrant is allowed to land in America who cannot prove that he possesses some means of existence. No couples should be allowed to enter the 'State of Union' who cannot prove that they possess means to support themselves, and are healthy in mind and in body.

2. Girls will be told, like in the past, that their destiny is to be one day wives and mothers, but they will be intelligently prepared for both n.o.ble vocations. They will come out of school able to keep a house, cook a good, palatable meal, and make their own dresses. They will know how to get their money's worth when they go a-shopping. They will have learned how to attend to babies, and have played with live dolls. They will have listened to, and profited by, lectures on hygiene. They will know all these things, besides possessing the accomplishments which are only meant to be dessert in matrimonial life.

Boys who have never been once told that their destiny is to become one day husbands and fathers will be prepared to be tolerably good ones.

They will be taught the consideration that man should always show to woman. They will be taught to take off their hats to women and young girls, and advised to do the same one day to their own wives when they meet them. When they get to be eighteen or twenty, they will be informed of women's characteristic traits. They will be told that a woman who accepts an offer of matrimony does a man more honour than he conferred on her by making the offer.

When men and women shall by early training be made, the former less selfish and conceited, the latter less frivolous and extravagant, the chances of happiness in matrimony will be greatly increased.

Still, the problem will not be solved.

You will never prevent matrimony being a lottery. Take your ticket and--your chance.

After all, matrimony is like a mushroom. The only way to ascertain whether it is the genuine article or poison that you have got is to swallow it--and wait.

CHAPTER III

WOMEN SHOULD a.s.sERT THEMSELVES IN MATRIMONY

A cynic once said that in this world men succeed through the qualities which they do not possess. By this he meant to say that to cope with the pushing crowd, you must not be too scrupulous, or you will let everybody pa.s.s before you.

A worse cynic, one of the blackest type and deepest dye, went as far as to say: 'The way to succeed is to have unbounded impudence, popular manners, absence of scruple, and complete ignorance of everything.'

But, then, take it for granted that this cynic was only a disappointed failure. You will constantly hear the man who has failed in life exclaim: 'Oh, if I had not always wished to remain perfectly honest, I could have succeeded like many others I know.'

Just as you hear women who fail to get engagements on the stage or the concert platform remark: 'If I had had no objection to obtaining engagements in the way some women do, I would have made my mark--but I am not one of that sort.'

At the risk of appearing paradoxical, and even cynical, I will venture to say that in love, and in matrimony especially, certain great qualities are more detrimental to the happiness of women than many of their defects. And if this is a correct statement, to what shortcoming of man are we going to attribute it?

I know that on reading this some women will exclaim: 'Shame on you to say such a thing!' Very well, will you listen to me? Look around you, among all your circles of friends and acquaintances, of relatives even, and tell me if, as a rule, the young girl who is vain, selfish, coquettish, a flirt even, has not better chances of marriage, and is not sought after rather than the simple, unaffected, devoted, intellectual girl? Tell me if the b.u.mptious rose does not generally carry the day over the modest, retiring violet?'

Of course, I know that you will say to me, 'You may be right; men--I mean most men--are caught, like mackerel, by shining bait; but when a man is married, surely he is not slow to recognise which of the two is the right one to have as a wife, and to appreciate all the qualities and virtues of the second one.'

Well, you are wrong--wrong as can be. Look around you again, study now the married couples that you know, and you will have to confess that the wife who is coquettish, frivolous, clever, will know how to make herself respected, and even feared, by her husband much more than the other.

That husband will pay to her his best attentions, will be proud of her, and will work like a slave in order to meet all the expenses required for the adornment of her beauty without once venturing to make a remark.

I tell you that if I had a marriageable daughter, whom I wanted to get rid of, I would tell her to put all her retiring ways in the cloak-room and to a.s.sert herself, and, after the wedding ceremony, I would whisper in her ears:

'My dear child, never make yourself the slave of your husband; be good, faithful and devoted to him, but do not forget that man is a strange animal, who seldom appreciates what he does not pay for. In this respect men are like those people who listen breathlessly to music in a hall or theatre where they have paid a guinea for their seats, and who, as guests in a drawing-room, take the very best music as a signal for entering into general conversation. If you want your husband to listen to your music, make him pay for his seat.'

The poor little woman who follows to the letter all the lectures she has heard on matrimony, at home and at church wedding ceremonies, will soon find the irreparable mistake she has made. In this role of devoted slave she will lose her beauty, her intelligence, her very mind, and will wither rapidly.

Devoting herself, body and soul, forgetting herself always in order to increase the welfare of her husband she will work, wear herself out, until, when her beauty is gone, her husband will feel for her nothing but indifference, if not, alas! sometimes contempt.

If one of the two must endure a privation in order that the other may have more comfort, it should be the man, always the man: first, because hard work and privations do not hurt a man as they can hurt a woman, physically and mentally; secondly, because a woman is far more apt to appreciate self-abnegation in a man than a man in a woman.