[-131-]
CHAPTER XII.
LONDON MATRIMONIAL.
LAST year 25,924 couples were married in the metropolis. The
Registrar-General tells us the increase of early marriages chiefly occurs in the
manufacturing and mining districts.
In London 2.74 of the men and 12.11 of the women who married
were not of full age. There is an excess of adults in the metropolis at the,
marrying ages over 21; and there are not apparently the same inducements to
marry early, as exist in the Midland counties.
Sir Cresswell Cresswell must have but a poor opinion of
matrimony. At the very moment of my writing, I am told there are six hundred
divorce cases in arrear; that is, after the hundreds whose chains he has
loosened, there, are, it appears, already twelve hundred more of injured wives
and husbands eager to be free. The evil, such as it is, will extend itself.
Under the old system there was, practically speaking, no redress, and a man and
woman tied together would endeavour to [-132-] make
the best of it; now, if they feel the more they quarrel and disagree with each
other, the better chance they have of being at liberty, it is to be feared, in
some cases, husband and wife will not try so heartily to forget and forgive, as
husbands and wives ought to do. I do not say there ought not to be liberty,
where all love has long since died out, and been followed by bad faith and
cruelty, and neglect. I believe there should be, and that the Divorce Act was an
experiment imperatively required. Where mutual love has been exchanged for
mutual hate, it is hard that human law should bind together, in what must be
life-long misery - misery perhaps not the less intense that it has uttered no
word of complaint, made no sign, been unsuspected by the world, yet all the
while dragging its victim to an early or premature grave. But human nature is a
poor weak thing, and many a silly man or silly woman may think that Sir
Cresswell Cresswell may prove a healing physician, when their malady was more in
themselves than they cared to believe. I hear of one case where a lady having £15,000
a-year in her own right, has run off with her footman. Would she have done that
if there had been no Sir Cresswell? I fancy not. Again, another marrried lady,
with £100,000 settled on her, runs off with the curate. Had it not occurred to
her that Sir Cresswell Cresswell would, in due time, dissolve her union with her
legitimate lord, and enable her to follow the bent of her passions, would she
not have fought with them, and in the conquest of them [-133-]
won more true peace for herself, than she can ever hope for now? I
believe so. In the long commerce of a life, there must be times, when we may
think of others we have known, when we may idly fancy we should have been
happier with others; but true wisdom will teach us that it is childish to lament
after the event, that it were wiser to take what comfort we can find, and that,
after all, it is duty, rather than happiness, that should be the pole-star of
life. Southey told Shelley a man might be happy with any woman, and certainly a
wise man, once married, will try to make the best of it. But to return to Sir
Cresswell Cresswell, I wish that he could give relief without stirring up such a
pool of stinking mud. Who is benefitted by the disgusting details? It is a fine
thing for the penny papers. They get a large sale, and so reap their reward. The
Times, also, is generally not very backward when anything peculiarly
revolting and indecent is to be told; but are the people, high or low, rich or
poor, the better? I find it hard to believe they are. How husbands can be false,
how wives can intrigue, how servants can connive, we know, and we do not want to
hear it repeated. If Prior's Chloe was an ale-house drab, if the Clara of Lord
Bolingbroke sold oranges in the Court of Requests, if Fielding kept indifferent
company, we are amused or grieved, but still learn something of genius, even
from its errors; but of the tribe Smith and Brown I care not to hear - ever
since the Deluge the Smiths and Browns have been much the same. What am I the
better for [-134-] learning all the rottenness of
domestic life? Is that fit reading for the family circle? I suppose the
newspapers think it is, but I cannot come to that opinion. Can it have a
wholesome effect on the national feeling? Can it heighten the reverence for
Nature's primary ordinance of matrimony?
In the Book of Common Prayer I read that matrimony is
"holy;" that it was instituted of God in the time of man's innocency,
signifying unto us the mystical union that is between Christ and his Church,
which holy estate Christ adorned and beautified with his presence and first
miracle that he wrought in Cana of Galilee; and is commended of St. Paul to be
honourable among all men, and, therefore, is not by any to be enterprised,
"nor taken in hand unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, to satisfy men's
carnal lusts or appetites, like brute beasts that have no understanding; but
reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God, duly
considering the causes for which matrimony was ordained."
Alas! our age is not a marrying age; and, therefore, I fear
it is an unholy one: neither our young men nor our young maidens honestly fall
in love and marry now-a-days. I don't know that the Registrar-General's report
says such. I know that many of his marriages are affairs of convenience; unions
of businesses, or thousands, or broad lands; not marriages "holy, in the
sense of the prayer-book and of God. A man. who marries simply for love, exposes
himself to ridicule; the modern ingenuous youth is not so green as all that; if [-135-]
he marries at all, it must be an heiress, or, at any rate, one well
dowered. The last thing your modern well-bred beauty does, is to unite her fate
with that of a man in the good old-fashioned way. She has learnt to set her
heart upon the accidents of life, - the fine house, the establishment; and if
these she cannot have, she will even die an old maid. The real is sacrificed to
the imaginary; the substance, to the shadow; the present, to the morrow that
never comes. A man says he will become rich; he will sacrifice everything to
that; and the chances are he becomes poor in heart and purse. The maiden-
With the meek brown eyes,
In whose orb a shadow lies,
Like the dusk in evening skies-
loses all her divinity, and pines away, and becomes what I care not to name; and
the world - whose wisdom is folly-sanctions all this. It calls it prudence,
foresight. A man has no business to marry till he can keep a wife, is the cuckoo
cry; which would have some meaning if a wife was a horse or a dog, and not an
answer to a human need, and an essential to success in life. The world forgets
that man is not an automaton, but a being fearfully and wonderfully framed. No
machine, but a lyre responsive to the breath of every passing passion: now
fevered with pleasure; now toiling for gold; anon seeking to build up a lofty
fame; and that the more eager and passionate and daring he is - the more eagle
is his eye, and the loftier his aim, the more he needs woman [-136-]
- the comforter and the helpmeet - by his side. Our fathers did not ignore this,
and they succeeded. Because the wife preserved them from the temptations of
life; because she, with her words and looks of love, assisted them to bear the
burdens and fight the battles of life; because she stood by her husband's side
as his help- meet; bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh; soothing each sorrow;
aiding each upward aim: it was thus they became great; and it is because we do
not thus, we pale before them. It is not good for man to be alone. Man has tried
to disobey the divine law, and lived alone; and what has been the result ? -
even when tried by men of superior sanctity, as in the case of the Romish
Church, has the world gained in happiness or morality? I trow not. Take the
limited experience of our own age, and fathers and mothers know, to their bitter
cost, I am right. The manhood, brave and generous, much of it wrecked in our
great cities, will bear me out. But matrimony is more than this. It spite of the
hard matter-of-fact, sceptical, and therefore sensual character of the passing
day, will it not be confessed that the union of man and woman, as husband and
wife, is the greatest earthly need, and is followed by the greatest earthly
good? Unhappy marriages there may be; imprudent ones there may be; but such are
not the rule; and very properly our legislators have agreed to give relief in
such cases. "Nature never did betray the soul that loved her ;" and
nature tells men and women to marry. Just as the young man is entering upon life
- just as he comes to independence [-137-] and
man's estate - just as the crisis of his being is to be solved, and it is to be
seen whether he decide with the good, and the great, and the true, or whether he
sink and be lost for ever, Matrimony gives him ballast and a right impulse. Of
course it can't make of a fool a philosopher ; but it can save a fool from being
foolish. War with nature and she takes a sure revenge. Tell a young man not to
have an attachment that is virtuous, and he will have one that is vicious.
Virtuous love - the honest love of a man for the woman he is about to
marry, gives him an anchor for his heart; something pure and beautiful for which
to labour and live; and the woman, what a purple light it sheds upon her path;
it makes life for her no day-dream; no idle hour; no painted shadow; no passing
show; but something real, earnest, worthy of her heart and head. But most of us
are cowards and dare not think so ; we lack grace; we are of little faith; our
inward eye is dim and dark. The modern young lady must marry in style; the
modern young gentleman marries a fortune. But in the meanwhile the girl grows
into an old maid, and the youth takes chambers - ogles at nursery-maids and
becomes a man about town - a man whom it is dangerous to ask into your house,
for his business is intrigue. The world might have had a happy couple; instead,
it gets a woman fretful, nervous, fanciful, a plague to all around her. He
becomes a sceptic in all virtue; a corrupter of the youth of both sexes; a curse
in what ever domestic circle he penetrates. Even worse may [-138-]
result. She may be deceived, and may die of a broken heart. He may rush
from one folly to another; associate only with the vicious and depraved; bring
disgrace and sorrow on himself and all around; and sink into an early grave. Our
great cities show what becomes of men and women who do not marry. Worldly
fathers and mothers advise not to marry till they can afford to keep a wife, and
the boys spend on a harlot more in six months than would keep a wife six years.
Hence it is, all wise men (like old Franklin) advocate early marriages; and that
all our great men, with rare exceptions, have been men who married young.
Wordsworth had only £100 a year when he first married. Lord Eldon was so poor
that he had to go to Clare-market to buy sprats for supper. Coleridge and
Southey I can't find had any income at all when they got married. I question at
any time whether Luther had more than fifty pounds a year. Our successful men in
trade and commerce marry young, like George Stephenson, and the wife helps him
up in the world in more ways than one. Dr. Smiles, in his little book on
Self-Help, gives us the following anecdote respecting J. Flaxman and his wife-
Ann Denham was the name of his wife - and a cheery, bright-souled, noble woman
she was. He believed that in marrying her he should be able to work with an
intenser spirit; for, like him, she had a taste for poetry and art! and,
besides, was an enthusiastic admirer of her husband's genius. Yet when Sir
Joshua Reynolds - himself a bachelor - met [-139-] Flaxman
shortly after his marriage, he said to him, 'So, Flaxman, I am told you are
married; if so, sir, I tell you, you are ruined for an artist.' Flaxman went
straight home, sat down beside his wife, took her hand in his, and said, 'Ann, I
am ruined for an artist.' 'How so, John? How has it happened? And who has done
it?' 'It happened,' he replied, 'in the church; and Ann Denham has done it.' He
then told her of Sir Joshua's remark - whose opinion was well known, and has
been often expressed, that if students would excel they must bring the whole
powers of their mind to bear upon their art from the moment they rise until they
go to bed; and also, that no man could be a great artist, unless he studied the
grand works of Raffaelle, Michael Angelo, and others, at Rome and Florence. 'And
I,' said Flaxman, drawing up his little figure to its full height, 'I would be a
great artist.' 'And a great artist you shall be,' said his wife, 'and visit
Rome, too, if that be really necessary to make you great.' 'But how?' asked
Flaxman. 'Work and economise,' rejoined his brave wife: 'I will never have it
said that Ann Denham ruined John Flaxman for an artist.' And so it was
determined by the pair that the journey to Rome was to be made when their means
would admit. 'I will go to Rome,' said Flaxman, 'and show the President that
wedlock is for mall's good rather than for his harm, and you, Ann, shall
accompany me.' He kept his word.
By forbidding our young men and maidens ma-[-140-]trimony,
we blast humanity in its very dawn. Fathers, you say you teach your sons
prudence - you do nothing of the kind; your worldly-wise and clever son is
already ruined for life. You will find him at Cremorne and at the Argyle Rooms.
Your wretched worldly-wisdom taught him to avoid the snare of marrying young;
and soon, if he is not involved in embarrassments which will last him a life, he
is a blasé fellow; heartless, false; without a single generous sentiment
or manly aim; he has-
"No God, no heaven, in the wide
world.