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CHAPTER VI
RAMBLES ABOUT MATRIMONY – III

To marry a beautiful woman for the mere love of her beauty is to undertake to dwell in a country that has a temperature of 100 in the shade without being provided with clothes that will enable you to stand a winter of 50 below zero when it comes.

In the relations between men and women it is, after all, beauty that makes woman particularly attractive to man. For this reason, the love of a man is more sensual, more jealous, than that of a woman, which is more affectionate, more confiding, and more faithful. As a rule, the passion of a husband goes on diminishing as that of his wife goes on increasing. A man exacts of his wife her first love; a woman exacts of her husband his last. Only the select few can manage their matrimonial affairs with such clever diplomacy as to make these different elements of happiness and sources of danger work together with success.

Married people would live more happily together if they could now and then forget that they are tied together for life. Any little scene that may help them to forget it should be enacted by them.

Happiness in matrimony is more solid when it is founded on friendship through thick and thin than when it is merely on love.

In love a moment of bliss is nothing; it is only the morrow which purifies and sanctifies it. How many married couples would be happy if they would only think of the morrow!

The husband who knows how to always keep something in store for his wife has solved the great problem of happiness in matrimonial life.

Cupid introduces men and women into that enclosure which is called matrimony, and then discreetly and almost immediately retires. What a pity it is he does not make their acquaintance later, in order to remain with them for ever!

Marriages would be very much happier if women preferred marrying men who love them to those whom they love.

Matrimony would be a glorious institution if women would take as much care of themselves for their husbands as they do when they expect guests at their dinner-parties and receptions.

Women should devote all their best attentions to learning how to grow old in time and gradually, and in remembering that tears make them unattractive, and angry looks hideous.

One of the greatest dangers to happiness in matrimony is not want of love, but too much of it, at the beginning especially. Love dies of indigestion more quickly than of any other disease. Never satiate your wife – or your husband – with love. Do not live on £10,000 the first year of your married life, and be obliged to reduce your income by £1,000 or £2,000 every year. Begin gently, quietly, and let your revenue, like your love, slowly but steadily increase. There lies your only chance. With self-control you have it at your disposal.

All vocations require preparation and apprenticeship. Matrimony is the only one which men and women can enter into without knowing anything about it. Alas!

CHAPTER VII
THE START IN MATRIMONY, AND ITS DANGERS

In matrimony it is not 'All is well that ends well'; it is 'All is well that begins well, but not too well.' Starting from this principle, I have often advised young husbands to control themselves, and to be careful to avoid putting all their smartest dialogue and strongest situations in the first act of the comedy of matrimony, for fear lest the interest should go on flagging steadily to the end.

I have advised them to see that their wives do not get their own way in everything at once, and not to make themselves their abject slaves, because, just as no government has ever been known to successfully suppress, or even reduce, any liberty or privilege previously granted to the people, just so will no husband be able to recover one inch of the ground he has surrendered if he capitulates on the threshold of matrimony.

In fact, let young husbands and young wives behave toward each other in such a way that their friends will not smile and say: 'Lovely, but too good to last, I'm afraid.'

The dangers against which I have attempted to warn men exist for women – devoted, loving women who wish to start matrimony by trying to do the impossible in order to please their husbands, or, if not the impossible, at all events, what it may not be in their power to do for ever, or even for a long time.

One of these dangers is that of economy.

'My dear,' remarked a shrewd friend to a bride of a few weeks' standing, 'you will make a terrible mistake if you let your husband think that you can keep house on nothing.'

Young wives are sometimes pitifully anxious to be credited with remarkable cleverness as house-mistresses. The more they love their husbands, the less they like the idea of their toiling and moiling. Hence they are keenly anxious to prove themselves helpmeets in the literal sense of the word.

Not only will they name a far smaller sum as housekeeping money than their husbands can well afford to give them, but they will actually save out of that sum enough for their own clothes and petty cash expenses.

All this self-sacrifice is not only charming, but beautiful, when there is necessity for rigid economy. Young couples who wisely marry on small incomes, instead of wasting the sweetness of their youth over an endless engagement, must make a study of ways and means, and the wife who will cajole a shilling into doing duty for a five-shilling piece is a jewel beyond price.

Again, when times are bad, when the bread-winner falls ill, and the treasury runs dry, there is no more pathetic and lovely sight than the brave little wife who struggles and succeeds in keeping the wolf out of the house.

But in instances where no serious demand of this kind need be made upon a wife's ingenuity, she is a very short-sighted woman indeed who does not see the dangers and realize the evils of overzealous economy.

There would be fewer complaints of marriages that result in the wife being merely an unpaid servant or housekeeper, who cannot give notice to leave, if brides began as they meant to go on, for no one save those who have lived through the process knows how difficult it is to introduce a new régime when once its opposite had been inaugurated and accepted.

'You said you would find £3 10s. a week ample a month ago. Why in the world do you want £5 now?' asks the husband, whose wife has been foolishly anxious to impress him with her cleverness as an economist, and finds she cannot keep up the farce beyond the limit of a few weeks.

Economy may be carried too far from choice. There are women who simply love saving. They neglect their intellectual life, and abandon all attempts to keep in the movement, all in order to grind down the weekly bills. No reward awaits them.

The women who believe themselves perfect because they are economical, and consider the spring-cleaning of their house the greatest event of the year, grow old before their time, and are never the companions modern wives should be to their husbands.

Be good, but never overdo it, I will say to any woman who has the sense of humour.

CHAPTER VIII
'OMELETTE AU RHUM'

When you are dining with an intimate friend, and an omelette au rhum is served, what do you do? Without any ceremony, you take a spoon, and, taking the burning liquid, you pour it over the dish gently and unceasingly. If you are careless, and fail to keep the pink and blue flame alive, it goes out at once, and you have to eat, instead of a delicacy, a dish fit only for people who like, or are used to have, their palates scraped by rough food. If you would be sure to be successful, you will ask your friend to help you watch the flame, and you will even ask him to lift the omelette gently so that the rhum may be poured all over it until the whole of the alcohol contained in the liquor is burned out.

This omelette au rhum is a fairly good symbol of matrimony.

In the earliest stage of married life the eggs have just been broken, beaten, and strewn with sugar, a light has been set, and everything is burning and perfectly beautiful. The young partakers of the matrimonial repast are intoxicated with their new life, their new emotions, their new sensations; they require no indulgence toward each other, no special cleverness or diplomacy to please each other; there are no concessions to make – neither of them can go or do wrong; the flame burns of itself.

I do not mean to say that the flame can be kept burning for ever and ever – alas! no, not any more than life can be made to eternally animate your body. The flame must go out one day, as some illness must one day end your life. But, just as hygiene teaches how to keep our good health prolonged by precautions of all sorts, just so does common-sense, aided by diplomacy and skill, help us to keep alive the flame of love between the man and the woman who have kindled it.

And let no woman accuse me of manly conceit if I say that, clever and attentive as the man must be, the woman has to be more clever and attentive still, and that simply because it is a fact – an uncontradicted fact (call it psychological if you like, or physiological if you prefer) – that the love or passion of a woman goes on naturally increasing in married life, whereas that of a man goes on just as gradually and steadily decreasing.

In marriage the flame of love has been known to keep long alive through the intelligence of the wife, and even without any effort in that direction on the part of the husband; but the contrary has never been known to be successful.

Woman is a divine delicacy who has to tempt the appetite of man; but the most exquisite delicacy may become insipid if served every day with the eternally same sauce. This is plain common-sense, and let me tell you this: that no married life (not one) has a shadow of chance to be happy for long unless the woman clearly understands and quickly realizes that, if moral duties are the same for men and women, Nature has made their temperaments absolutely different.

CHAPTER IX
COQUETRY IN MATRIMONY

No coquetry in matrimony? Who is the Philistine who dares utter such blasphemy? Good heavens! if half the curling-pins, which are used by women at night in order to be beautiful the following day and attract the attention and admiration of strangers, were used by them in the morning, so that they might be beautiful the same day, and draw the attention and admiration of their husbands, there would be happiness in matrimony, and the world would go much better than it does.

The greatest, the most dangerous enemy of happiness in matrimony is habit which engenders monotony. You get too much accustomed to each other, and love fades, as a flower which falls off its stem before it has lived its natural life, owing to some insect which destroys it.

That insect in matrimony is habit, which devours everything without your being aware of its presence. Destroy that insect before it has had time to do any harm, and you will have saved your dual happiness.

A grave error committed by many women is to believe that they must look their best for the friends, acquaintances and strangers who visit them, but that they need not take much trouble for their husbands.

But the fact is that a woman ought to ever appear before her husband at her very best, whether it is in a morning negligée or in a full afternoon or evening toilette.

Your husband, my dear lady, ought to see in you more than he could see in any other woman. All comparisons ought to be to your advantage. It is not at all necessary that you should have an expensive gown on at breakfast-time. Your hair well fixed, and a nice-fitting dressing-gown may make you look as attractive as a beautiful ball-dress.

It is not clothes that make a woman fascinating; it is the way she puts them on.

In fact, never allow yourself to be seen by your husband in any other state than that in which you would allow yourself to be seen by the male portion of your acquaintances, not even in illness. As long as your strength permit, remain coquettish and jealous of your appearance. Yes, I say, even on a sick-bed.

The part you have to play consists in spraying a perfume of poetry around you. Fill your husband with remembrances of you, so that, even when you are not visible, you are present before his eyes.

Allow him the most complete liberty, and never ask him questions on what he has done, where he has been.

Take it for granted that he has done nothing which he should not have done, that he has been nowhere where he should not have been, and it is that perfect confidence which you show you have in him that will always keep him in the path of faithfulness, unless he is, which is only exceptional, an absolutely bad man.

If clouds are gathering over your happiness, it is for you women to clear them away. You are the guardian angels of the home, which is your kingdom. If you have trials, strain every nerve to appear smiling, and if sometimes tears stifle you, shed them in secret, even should the cause of your trial be the inconstancy of your husband.

You will not bring him back to you with reproaches, tears and scenes. You will thus keep him away for good. Remember that Nature, which has treated you so ungenerously, makes you ugly when you weep and hideous when you make a scene.

You will bring back an erring husband by your kindness, your sweetness, your devotion, and your intelligence. The only infallible way to get a husband attached to you is to let him believe that you never suspected him, much less accused him, even when he was guilty. Call to your aid whatever resources are at your disposal – resources of intelligence, of beauty, of abnegation – and, if your husband is not a brute, he will return to you, and he will be all the more ashamed of the way in which he neglected you for a time that, by your behaviour, you seem to consider he had never for a day ceased to love you.

Never make an allusion to the fatted calf which you killed on the return of the prodigal heart. Be as merciful in your victory as you were in your temporary defeat.

Do not be satisfied with forgiving; forget, and make him forget everything. Use scales: on one side place his years of devotion to you, his industry, his forethought in securing your future and that of your children; on the other his faults; and even if these scales should incline to remain horizontal, with a gentle touch of your finger make them go down in favour of what he has done for you.

The supreme coquetry of a woman is to know how to reign, even when her husband governs. Her very weakness is the best weapon in her hands. Her husband should be the motive of all her actions. Before thinking of appearing beautiful to the indifferent, she should think of appearing beautiful to her husband.

If she is admired, she should feel proud of it for his sake, and make him understand that only crumbs are for strangers; that he alone is invited to the whole meal of her beauty, her love, her boundless devotion.

And let me add that there is not, in this chapter, a single word of advice which I give to women in their dealings with husbands which I do not endorse and give to men in their dealings with their wives.

CHAPTER X
RESIGNATION IN MATRIMONY

According to characters and circumstances, resignation is the virtue of the weak or the virtue of the strong. A woman resigns herself to her fate in married life, sometimes because she has not enough strength of will, sometimes because she does not deign to revolt, oftener still because she discovers that her rebellion could only make matters worse for herself, and especially for her children.

If her husband is good, her resignation will soon bring him back to her; if he is bad, her rebellion will make him much worse.

If you cannot sympathize with your husband, or adopt his views and manner of thinking, resign yourself, keep your views for yourself, and do not transform your married life into an eternal French public meeting, where, instead of striking pebbles together in order to obtain light, they throw them at one another's faces.

Fulfil your duties. Never complain. Never exact what is not offered to you, unless it be respect. So long as your husband treats you with respect, at home as well as in public; so long as he is the thoughtful father of your children, and carefully and industriously attends to his profession or business, respect him and inspire in your children the respect for him, and especially do not make your children the confidant of your grievances; that is your foremost duty.

I cannot say to you: Try to force yourself to love your husband. This is not in your power. But I will say: Be irreproachable, and thus make yourself the superior of your husband. Devote yourself to your family. If you are rich, do with your money all the good that you can. The greatest possession is self-esteem. You can rise so high that the offences committed against you may appear infinitely small. After all, we get in this world the place that we know how to make for ourselves.

Never let the outside public know the details of your private life. Receive your friends and your guests with a smile on your lips. If your husband is a gentleman, he will show you before them the greatest consideration, and if you are a lady you will treat him in a like manner.

If your husband is unable to offer you his love – I mean a lover's love – do not commit the mistake of refusing his friendship, for it is just possible that this man, who has not in him the power to love you as a lover, would still be ready to give his life for you.

He would certainly be still ready to give it for his children, your children. Surely that friendship is worth having. Of course, the young wife, who discovers after only a few years of marriage that the dream of love has vanished, is to be pitied, supposing that it has not been through her fault that the dream has had such a short life; but the woman who for twenty or more years has had a faithful lover-husband is conceited and ridiculous beyond measure when she does not almost cheerfully resign herself to the inevitable crisis in matrimony; and if she has children that she takes in her confidence, and thus estranges from their father, her vanity is not very far from criminal. At all events, she deserves the sympathy of no one.

Resign yourself to the inevitable. Let the days of love, happiness, and devotion count in the final reckoning, and, in turning over a new leaf, be sure you bring forward devotion, and soon happiness may have to be added again.

Put on a cheerful face always, and remember that it pays to excite envy, never to excite pity.

CHAPTER XI
TIT FOR TAT

There is more joy in heaven, we are told, for one sinner who repents than for a hundred righteous people who keep straight on the narrow ways of salvation.

And, I should add, there must be more joy in hell for one good man who goes wrong than for a hundred sinners who persevere in their wicked ways.

There should be more joy in the heart of a woman for a man who remains in love with her than for a hundred others whose admiration she may obtain.

There are some women who may love a man ever so much, and be loved by him to their hearts' content, who will use all their artillery to bring down strangers to their feet, but who will make little or no effort to look their best for the man who loves them and is devoted to them. For such women their beauty is an altar erected to unknown gods.

Married life would be an everyday bliss and an eternal one if men never thought of doing to or before their wives what they would never dream of doing to or before any ladies of their acquaintance, and, of course, if women did the same; but such is not always, even often, the case. Hence the trouble.

How many men have taken their wives to a ball, women whose radiant beauty and brilliant toilettes have caused the admiration of all men present, and also the envy of many women?

How many men have felt that, if the said wives had made as much preparation for them as they had for all the strangers present at that ball, they could have fallen at their feet and worshipped them?

On returning home, however, Madame has immediately retired to her room, ordered her maid to quickly remove and pack away the lovely attire, and, an hour later, prepared for the night's rest, she appeared before her husband with her hair all prepared for the next day, her hands carefully gloved so that they may be as white as snow – also for the next day – and wrapped up and as inaccessible as a valuable clock that is going to be shipped to the other end of the world.

That is the lot of many men – may I not even say of most husbands? Then a bold husband will venture to make some remarks. He will say, 'Now, my dear, I hear you practise your scales and exercises, but seldom do you treat me to a piece of music, which I only hear when I have guests or we go out. Everyone – at the ball – has admired your beautiful hair and your lovely gown, but for me, all I see is hairpins and curlers and a dressing-gown.'

And Madame will answer more or less sourly, 'Is it because I am your wife that I must grow ugly? Do you want my hair to fall over my neck and shoulders to-morrow like weeping willows? Do you want my hands to be red and chappy? Are you sorry I am careful of my clothes and have them put away, well folded in tissue-paper, when I have no need of them?

'Do you reproach me for doing you honour and being at the same time careful? Will you tell me, is there any way to please you? And do you think that, after enjoying herself and receiving compliments during a whole evening, it is very pleasant for a woman to return home and hear nothing but rebuffs, reproaches and the like?'

The poor man feels he is beaten, that he is a brute, and he says nothing more, until one night when it is time to retire, he prepares a surprise for his wife.

'What's all this?' exclaims the wife when she realizes what has happened.

'Nothing, dear,' he replies. 'To tell you the truth, I go hunting to-morrow morning, and I shall have to rise very early. My hunting-boots are new, and in the morning my feet are always a little swollen, so I keep them on to save trouble. You must excuse my spurs, too, dear, but I prefer these, which are fastened to the boots. I shall be most comfortable to-morrow.'