I am often filled with wonder that so many marriages are passably successful, and so few come to open failure, the more so as I fail to understand the principle on which people regulate their choice.I see women marrying indiscriminately with staring burgesses and ferret-faced, white-eyed boys, and men dwell in contentment with noisy scullions, or taking into their lives acidulous vestals.It is a common answer to say the good people marry because they fall in love; and of course you may use and misuse a word as much as you please, if you have the world along with you.But love is at least a somewhat hyperbolical expression for such luke-warm preference.It is not here, anyway, that Love employs his golden shafts; he cannot be said, with any fitness of language, to reign here and revel.Indeed, if this be love at all, it is plain the poets have been fooling with mankind since the foundation of the world.And you have only to look these happy couples in the face, to see they have never been in love, or in hate, or in any other high passion, all their days.When you see a dish of fruit at dessert, you sometimes set your affections upon one particular peach or nectarine, watch it with some anxiety as it comes round the table, and feel quite a sensible disappointment when it is taken by some one else.I have used the phrase "high passion." Well, Ishould say this was about as high a passion as generally leads to marriage.One husband hears after marriage that some poor fellow is dying of his wife's love."What a pity!" he exclaims; "you know I could so easily have got another!" And yet that is a very happy union.Or again: A young man was telling me the sweet story of his loves."I like it well enough as long as her sisters are there," said this amorous swain; "but I don't know what to do when we're alone." Once more: A married lady was debating the subject with another lady."You know, dear," said the first, "after ten years of marriage, if he is nothing else, your husband is always an old friend." "I have many old friends," returned the other, "but I prefer them to be nothing more." "Oh, perhaps I might PREFER that also!" There is a common note in these three illustrations of the modern idyll; and it must be owned the god goes among us with a limping gait and blear eyes.You wonder whether it was so always; whether desire was always equally dull and spiritless, and possession equally cold.Icannot help fancying most people make, ere they marry, some such table of recommendations as Hannah Godwin wrote to her brother William anent her friend, Miss Gay.It is so charmingly comical, and so pat to the occasion, that I must quote a few phrases."The young lady is in every sense formed to make one of your disposition really happy.She has a pleasing voice, with which she accompanies her musical instrument with judgment.She has an easy politeness in her manners, neither free nor reserved.She is a good housekeeper and a good economist, and yet of a generous disposition.As to her internal accomplishments, I have reason to speak still more highly of them: good sense without vanity, a penetrating judgment without a disposition to satire, with about as much religion as my William likes, struck me with a wish that she was my William's wife." That is about the tune: pleasing voice, moderate good looks, unimpeachable internal accomplishments after the style of the copy-book, with about as much religion as my William likes; and then, with all speed, to church.
To deal plainly, if they only married when they fell in love, most people would die unwed; and among the others, there would be not a few tumultuous households.The Lion is the King of Beasts, but he is scarcely suitable for a domestic pet.In the same way, I suspect love is rather too violent a passion to make, in all cases, a good domestic sentiment.
Like other violent excitements, it throws up not only what is best, but what is worst and smallest, in men's characters.
Just as some people are malicious in drink, or brawling and virulent under the influence of religious feeling, some are moody, jealous, and exacting when they are in love, who are honest, downright, good-hearted fellows enough in the everyday affairs and humours of the world.
How then, seeing we are driven to the hypothesis that people choose in comparatively cold blood, how is it they choose so well? One is almost tempted to hint that it does not much matter whom you marry; that, in fact, marriage is a subjective affection, and if you have made up your mind to it, and once talked yourself fairly over, you could "pull it through" with anybody.But even if we take matrimony at its lowest, even if we regard it as no more than a sort of friendship recognised by the police, there must be degrees in the freedom and sympathy realised, and some principle to guide simple folk in their selection.Now what should this principle be? Are there no more definite rules than are to be found in the Prayer-book? Law and religion forbid the bans on the ground of propinquity or consanguinity; society steps in to separate classes; and in all this most critical matter, has common sense, has wisdom, never a word to say? In the absence of more magisterial teaching, let us talk it over between friends: even a few guesses may be of interest to youths and maidens.
In all that concerns eating and drinking, company, climate, and ways of life, community of taste is to be sought for.It would be trying, for instance, to keep bed and board with an early riser or a vegetarian.In matters of art and intellect, I believe it is of no consequence.Certainly it is of none in the companionships of men, who will dine more readily with one who has a good heart, a good cellar, and a humorous tongue, than with another who shares all their favourite hobbies and is melancholy withal.If your wife likes Tupper, that is no reason why you should hang your head.
