147. Winter is the great season for jaunting and dancing (called frolicking) in America. In this Province the river and the creeks were the only roads from settlement to settlement. In summer we travelled in canoes; in winter in sleighs on the ice or snow. During more than two years I spent all the time I could with my Yankee friends: they were all fond of me: I talked to them about country affairs, my evident delight in which they took as a compliment to themselves: the father and mother treated me as one of their children; the sons as a brother; and the daughter, who was as modest and as full of sensibility as she was beautiful, in a way to which a chap much less sanguine than I was would have given the tenderest interpretation; which treatment I, especially in the last-mentioned case, most cordially repaid.
148. It is when you meet in company with others of your own age that you are, in love matters, put, most frequently, to the test, and exposed to detection. The next door neighbour might, in that country, be ten miles off. We used to have a frolic, sometimes at one house and sometimes at another. Here, where female eyes are very much on the alert, no secret can long be kept; and very soon father, mother, brothers and the whole neighbourhood looked upon the thing as certain, not excepting herself, to whom I, however, had never once even talked of marriage, and had never even told her that I loved her. But I had a thousand times done these by implication, taking into view the interpretation that she would naturally put upon my looks, appellations and acts; and it was of this, that I had to accuse myself. Yet I was not a deceiver; for my affection for her was very great: I spent no really pleasant hours but with her: I was uneasy if she showed the slightest regard for any other young man: I was unhappy if the smallest matter affected her health or spirits: I quitted her in dejection, and returned to her with eager delight: many a time, when I could get leave but for a day, I paddled in a canoe two whole succeeding nights, in order to pass that day with her. If this was not love, it was first cousin to it; for as to any criminal intention I no more thought of it, in her case, than if she had been my sister. Many times I put to myself the questions: 'What am I at? Is not this wrong? Why do I go?' But still I went.
149. Then, further in my excuse, my prior engagement, though carefully left unalluded to by both parties, was, in that thin population, and owing to the singular circumstances of it, and to the great talk that there always was about me, perfectly well known to her and all her family. It was matter of so much notoriety and conversation in the Province, that GENERAL CARLETON (brother of the late Lord Dorchester), who was the Governor when I was there, when he, about fifteen years afterwards, did me the honour, on his return to England, to come and see me at my house in Duke Street, Westminster, asked, before he went away, to see my wife, of whom he had heard so much before her marriage. So that here was no deception on my part: but still I ought not to have suffered even the most distant hope to be entertained by a person so innocent, so amiable, for whom I had so much affection, and to whose heart I had no right to give a single twinge. I ought, from the very first, to have prevented the possibility of her ever feeling pain on my account. I was young, to be sure; but I was old enough to know what was my duty in this case, and I ought, dismissing my own feelings, to have had the resolution to perform it.
150. The last parting came; and now came my just punishment! The time was known to every body, and was irrevocably fixed; for I had to move with a regiment, and the embarkation of a regiment is an epoch in a thinly settled province. To describe this parting would be too painful even at this distant day, and with this frost of age upon my head. The kind and virtuous father came forty miles to see me just as I was going on board in the river. His looks and words I have never forgotten. As the vessel descended, she passed the mouth of that creek which I had so often entered with delight; and though England, and all that England contained, were before me, I lost sight of this creek with an aching heart.
151. On what trifles turn the great events in the life of man! If I had received a cool letter from my intended wife; if I had only heard a rumour of any thing from which fickleness in her might have been inferred; if I had found in her any, even the smallest, abatement of affection; if she had but let go any one of the hundred strings by which she held my heart: if any of these, never would the world have heard of me. Young as I was; able as I was as a soldier; proud as I was of the admiration and commendations of which I was the object; fond as I was, too, of the command, which, at so early an age, my rare conduct and great natural talents had given me; sanguine as was my mind, and brilliant as were my prospects: yet I had seen so much of the meannesses, the unjust partialities, the insolent pomposity, the disgusting dissipations of that way of life, that I was weary of it: I longed, exchanging my fine laced coat for the Yankee farmer's home-spun, to be where I should never behold the supple crouch of servility, and never hear the hectoring voice of authority, again; and, on the lonely banks of this branch-covered creek, which contained (she out of the question) every thing congenial to my taste and dear to my heart, I, unapplauded, unfeared, unenvied and uncalumniated, should have lived and died.
152. It is in this capacity that your conduct will have the greatest effect on your happiness; and a great deal will depend on the manner in which you begin. I am to suppose that you have made a good choice; but a good young woman may be made, by a weak, a harsh, a neglectful, an extravagant, or a profligate husband, a really bad wife and mother. All in a wife, beyond her own natural disposition and education is, nine times out of ten, the work of her husband.
153. The first thing of all, be the rank in life what it may, is to convince her of the necessity of moderation in expense; and to make her clearly see the justice of beginning to act upon the presumption, that there are children coming, that they are to be provided for, and that she is to assist in the making of that provision. Legally speaking, we have a right to do what we please with our own property, which, however, is not our own, unless it exceed our debts. And, morally speaking, we, at the moment of our marriage, contract a debt with the naturally to be expected fruit of it; and, therefore (reserving further remarks upon this subject till I come to speak of the education of children), the scale of expense should, at the beginning, be as low as that of which a due attention to rank in life will admit.
154. The great danger of all is, beginning with servants, or a servant. Where there are riches, or where the business is so great as to demand help in the carrying on of the affairs of a house, one or more female servants must be kept; but, where the work of a house can be done by one pair of hands, why should there be two; especially as you cannot have the hands without having the mouth, and, which is frequently not less costly, inconvenient and injurious, the tongue? When children come, there must, at times, be some foreign aid; but, until then, what need can the wife of a young tradesman, or even farmer (unless the family be great) have of a servant? The wife is young, and why is she not to work as well as the husband? What justice is there in wanting you to keep two women instead of one? You have not married them both in form; but, if they be inseparable, you have married them in substance; and if you are free from the crime of bigamy, you have the far most burthensome part of its consequences.
155. I am well aware of the unpopularity of this doctrine; well aware of its hostility to prevalent habits; well aware that almost every tradesman and every farmer, though with scarcely a shilling to call his own; and that every clerk, and every such person, begins by keeping a servant, and that the latter is generally provided before the wife be installed: I am well aware of all this; but knowing, from long and attentive observation, that it is the great bane of the marriage life; the great cause of that penury, and of those numerous and tormenting embarrassments, amidst which conjugal felicity can seldom long be kept alive, I give the advice, and state the reasons on which it was founded.
156. In London, or near it, a maid servant cannot be kept at an expense so low as that of thirty pounds a year; for, besides her wages, board and lodging, there must be a fire solely for her; or she must sit with the husband and wife, hear every word that passes between them, and between them and their friends; which will, of course, greatly add to the pleasures of their fire-side! To keep her tongue still would be impossible, and, indeed, unreasonable; and if, as may frequently happen, she be prettier than the wife, she will know how to give the suitable interpretation to the looks which, to a next to a certainty, she will occasionally get from him, whom, as it were in mockery, she calls by the name of 'master.' This is almost downright bigamy; but this can never do; and, therefore, she must have a fire to herself. Besides the blaze of coals, however, there is another sort of flame that she will inevitably covet. She will by no means be sparing of the coals; but, well fed and well lodged, as she will be, whatever you may be, she will naturally sigh for the fire of love, for which she carries in her bosom a match always ready prepared. In plain language, you have a man to keep, a part, at least, of every week; and the leg of lamb, which might have lasted you and your wife for three days, will, by this gentleman's sighs, be borne away in one. Shut the door against this intruder; out she goes herself; and, if she go empty-handed, she is no true Christian, or, at least, will not be looked upon as such by the charitable friend at whose house she meets the longing soul, dying partly with love and partly with hunger.
157. The cost, altogether, is nearer fifty pounds a year than thirty. How many thousands of tradesmen and clerks, and the like, who might have passed through life without a single embarrassment, have lived in continual trouble and fear, and found a premature grave, from this very cause, and this cause alone! When I, on my return from America, in 1800, lived a short time in Saint James's Street, following my habit of early rising, I used to see the servant maids, at almost every house, dispensing charity at the expense of their masters, long before they, good men, opened their eyes, who thus did deeds of benevolence, not only without boasting of them, but without knowing of them. Meat, bread, cheese, butter, coals, candles; all came with equal freedom from these liberal hands. I have observed the same, in my early walks and rides, in every part of this great place and its environs. Where there is one servant it is worse than where there are two or more; for, happily for their employers, they do not always agree. So that the oppression is most heavy on those who are the least able to bear it: and particularly on clerk, and such like people, whose wives seem to think, that, because the husband's work is of a genteel description, they ought to live the life of ladies. Poor fellows! their work is not hard and rough, to be sure; but, it is work, and work for many hours too, and painful enough; and as to their income, it scarcely exceeds, on an average, the double, at any rate, of that of a journeyman carpenter, bricklayer, or tailor.
158. Besides, the man and wife will live on cheaper diet and drink than a servant will live. Thousands, who would never have had beer in their house, have it for the servant, who will not live without it. However frugal your wife, her frugality is of little use, if she have one of these inmates to provide for. Many a hundred thousand times has it happened that the butcher and the butter-man have been applied to solely because there was a servant to satisfy. You cannot, with this clog everlastingly attached to you, be frugal, if you would: you can save nothing against the days of expense, which are, however, pretty sure to come. And why should you bring into your house a trouble like this; an absolute annoyance; a something for your wife to watch, to be a constraint upon her, to thwart her in her best intentions, to make her uneasy, and to sour her temper? Why should you do this foolish thing? Merely to comply with corrupt fashion; merely from false shame, and false and contemptible pride? If a young man were, on his marriage, to find any difficulty in setting this ruinous fashion at defiance, a very good way would be to count down to his wife, at the end of every week, the amount of the expense of a servant for that week, and request her to deposit it in her drawer. In a short time she would find the sum so large, that she would be frightened at the thoughts of a servant; and would never dream of one again, except in case of absolute necessity, and then for as short a time as possible.
159. But the wife may not be able to do all the work to be done in the house. Not able! A young woman not able to cook and wash, and mend and make, and clean the house and make the bed for one young man and herself, and that young man her husband too, who is quite willing (if he be worth a straw) to put up with cold dinner, or with a crust; to get up and light her fire; to do any thing that the mind can suggest to spare her labour, and to conduce to her convenience! Not able to do this? Then, if she brought no fortune, and he had none, she ought not to have been able to marry: and, let me tell you, young man, a small fortune would not put a servant-keeping wife upon an equality with one who required no such inmate.
160. If, indeed, the work of a house were harder than a young woman could perform without pain, or great fatigue; if it had a tendency to impair her health or deface her beauty; then you might hesitate: but, it is not too hard, and it tends to preserve health, to keep the spirits buoyant, and, of course, to preserve beauty. You often hear girls, while scrubbing or washing, singing till they are out of breath; but never while they are at what they call working at the needle. The American wives are most exemplary in this respect. They have none of that false pride, which prevents thousands in England from doing that which interest, reason, and even their own inclination would prompt them to do. They work, not from necessity; not from compulsion of any sort; for their husbands are the most indulgent in the whole world. In the towns they go to the market, and cheerfully carry home the result: in the country, they not only do the work in the house, but extend their labours to the garden, plant and weed and hoe, and gather and preserve the fruits and the herbs; and this, too, in a climate far from being so favourable to labour as that of England; and they are amply repaid for these by those gratifications which their excellent economy enables their husbands to bestow upon them, and which it is their universal habit to do with a liberal hand.
161. But did I practise what I am here preaching? Aye, and to the full extent. Till I had a second child, no servant ever entered my house, though well able to keep one; and never, in my whole life, did I live in a house so clean, in such trim order, and never have I eaten or drunk, or slept or dressed, in a manner so perfectly to my fancy, as I did then. I had a great deal of business to attend to, that took me a great part of the day from home; but, whenever I could spare a minute from business, the child was in my arms; I rendered the mother's labour as light as I could; any bit of food satisfied me; when watching was necessary, we shared it between us; and that famous GRAMMAR for teaching French people English, which has been for thirty years, and still is, the great work of this kind, throughout all America, and in every nation in Europe, was written by me, in hours not employed in business, and, in great part, during my share of the night-watchings over a sick, and then only child, who, after lingering many months, died in my arms.
162. This was the way that we went on: this was the way that we began the married life; and surely, that which we did with pleasure no young couple, unendowed with fortune, ought to be ashamed to do. But she may be ill; the time may be near at hand, or may have actually arrived, when she must encounter that particular pain and danger of which you have been the happy cause! Oh! that is quite another matter! And if you now exceed in care, in watchings over her, in tender attention to all her wishes, in anxious efforts to quiet her fears; if you exceed in pains and expense to procure her relief and secure her life; if you, in any of these, exceed that which I would recommend, you must be romantic indeed! She deserves them all, and more than all, ten thousand times told. And now it is that you feel the blessing conferred by her economy. That heap of money, which might have been squandered on, or by, or in consequence of, an useless servant, you now have in hand wherewith to procure an abundance of that skill and that attendance of which she stands in absolute need; and she, when restored to you in smiling health, has the just pride to reflect, that she may have owed her life and your happiness to the effects of her industry.
163. It is the beginning that is every thing in this important case; and you will have, perhaps, much to do to convince her, not that what you recommend is advantageous; not that it is right; but to convince her that she can do it without sinking below the station that she ought to maintain. She would cheerfully do it; but there are her next-door neighbours, who do not do it, though, in all other respects, on a par with her. It is not laziness, but pernicious fashion, that you will have to combat. But the truth is, that there ought to be no combat at all; this important matter ought to be settled and fully agreed on beforehand. If she really love you, and have common sense, she will not hesitate a moment; and if she be deficient in either of these respects; and if you be so mad in love as to be unable to exist without her, it is better to cease to exist at once, than to become the toiling and embarrassed slave of a wasting and pillaging servant.
164. The next thing to be attended to is, your demeanor towards a young wife. As to oldish ones, or widows, time and other things have, in most cases, blunted their feelings, and rendered harsh or stern demeanor in the husband a matter not of heart-breaking consequence. But with a young and inexperienced one, the case is very different; and you should bear in mind, that the first frown that she receives from you is a dagger to her heart. Nature has so ordered it, that men shall become less ardent in their passion after the wedding day; and that women shall not. Their ardour increases rather than the contrary; and they are surprisingly quick-sighted and inquisitive on this score. When the child comes, it divides this ardour with the father; but until then you have it all; and if you have a mind to be happy, repay it with all your soul. Let what may happen to put you out of humour with others, let nothing put you out of humour with her. Let your words and looks and manners be just what they were before you called her wife.
165. But now, and throughout your life, show your affection for her, and your admiration of her, not in nonsensical compliment; not in picking up her handkerchief, or her glove, or in carrying her fan or parasol; not, if you have the means, in hanging trinkets and baubles upon her; not in making yourself a fool by winking at, and seeming pleased at, her foibles, or follies, or faults; but show them by acts of real goodness towards her; prove by unequivocal deeds the high value that you set on her health and life and peace of mind; let your praise of her go to the full extent of her deserts, but let it be consistent with truth and with sense, and such as to convince her of your sincerity. He who is the flatterer of his wife only prepares her ears for the hyperbolical stuff of others. The kindest appellation that her Christian name affords is the best you can use, especially before faces. An everlasting 'my dear' is but a sorry compensation for a want of that sort of love that makes the husband cheerfully toil by day, break his rest by night, endure all sorts of hardships, if the life or health of his wife demand it. Let your deeds, and not your words, carry to her heart a daily and hourly confirmation of the fact, that you value her health and life and happiness beyond all other things in the world; and let this be manifest to her, particularly at those times when life is always more or less in danger.
166. I began my young marriage days in and near Philadelphia. At one of those times to which I have just alluded, in the middle of the burning hot month of July, I was greatly afraid of fatal consequences to my wife for want of sleep, she not having, after the great danger was over, had any sleep for more than forty-eight hours. All great cities, in hot countries, are, I believe, full of dogs; and they, in the very hot weather, keep up, during the night, a horrible barking and fighting and howling. Upon the particular occasion to which I am adverting, they made a noise so terrible and so unremitted, that it was next to impossible that even a person in full health and free from pain should obtain a minute's sleep. I was, about nine in the evening, sitting by the bed: 'I do think,' said she, 'that I could go to sleep now, if it were not for the dogs.' Down stairs I went, and out I sallied, in my shirt and trowsers, and without shoes and stockings; and, going to a heap of stones lying beside the road, set to work upon the dogs, going backward and forward, and keeping them at two or three hundred yards' distance from the house. I walked thus the whole night, barefooted, lest the noise of my shoes might possibly reach her ears; and I remember that the bricks of the causeway were, even in the night, so hot as to be disagreeable to my feet. My exertions produced the desired effect: a sleep of several hours was the consequence; and, at eight o'clock in the morning, off went I to a day's business, which was to end at six in the evening.
167. Women are all patriots of the soil; and when her neighbours used to ask my wife whether all English husbands were like hers, she boldly answered in the affirmative. I had business to occupy the whole of my time, Sundays and weekdays, except sleeping hours; but I used to make time to assist her in the taking care of her baby, and in all sorts of things: get up, light her fire, boil her tea-kettle, carry her up warm water in cold weather, take the child while she dressed herself and got the breakfast ready, then breakfast, get her in water and wood for the day, then dress myself neatly, and sally forth to my business. The moment that was over I used to hasten back to her again; and I no more thought of spending a moment away from her, unless business compelled me, than I thought of quitting the country and going to sea. The thunder and lightning are tremendous in America, compared with what they are in England. My wife was, at one time, very much afraid of thunder and lightning; and as is the feeling of all such women, and, indeed, all men too, she wanted company, and particularly her husband, in those times of danger. I knew well, of course, that my presence would not diminish the danger; but, be I at what I might, if within reach of home, I used to quit my business and hasten to her, the moment I perceived a thunder storm approaching. Scores of miles have I, first and last, run on this errand, in the streets of Philadelphia! The Frenchmen, who were my scholars, used to laugh at me exceedingly on this account; and sometimes, when I was making an appointment with them, they would say, with a smile and a bow, 'Sauve la tonnerre toujours, Monsieur Cobbett.'
168. I never dangled about at the heels of my wife; seldom, very seldom, ever walked out, as it is called, with her; I never 'went a walking' in the whole course of my life; never went to walk without having some object in view other than the walk; and, as I never could walk at a slow pace, it would have been hard work for her to keep up with me; so that, in the nearly forty years of our married life, we have not walked out together, perhaps, twenty times. I hate a dangler, who is more like a footman than a husband. It is very cheap to be kind in trifles; but that which rivets the affections is not to be purchased with money. The great thing of all, however, is to prove your anxiety at those times of peril to her, and for which times you, nevertheless, wish. Upon those occasions I was never from home, be the necessity for it ever so great: it was my rule, that every thing must give way to that. In the year 1809, some English local militiamen were flogged, in the Isle of Ely, in England, under a guard of Hanoverians, then stationed in England. I, reading an account of this in a London newspaper, called the COURIER, expressed my indignation at it in such terms as it became an Englishman to do. The Attorney General, Gibbs, was set on upon me; he harassed me for nearly a year, then brought me to trial, and I was, by Ellenborough, Grose, Le Blanc, and Bailey, sentenced to two years' imprisonment in Newgate, to pay a fine to the king of a thousand pounds, and to be held in heavy bail for seven years after the expiration of the imprisonment! Every one regarded it as a sentence of death. I lived in the country at the time, seventy miles from London; I had a farm on my hands; I had a family of small children, amongst whom I had constantly lived; I had a most anxious and devoted wife, who was, too, in that state, which rendered the separation more painful ten-fold. I was put into a place amongst felons, from which I had to rescue myself at the price of twelve guineas a week for the whole of the two years. The King, poor man! was, at the close of my imprisonment, not in a condition to receive the thousand pounds; but his son, the present king, punctually received it 'in his name and behalf;' and he keeps it still.
169. The sentence, though it proved not to be one of death, was, in effect, one of ruin, as far as then-possessed property went. But this really appeared as nothing, compared with the circumstance, that I must now have a child born in a felons' jail, or be absent from the scene at the time of the birth. My wife, who had come to see me for the last time previous to her lying-in, perceiving my deep dejection at the approach of her departure for Botley, resolved not to go; and actually went and took a lodging as near to Newgate as she could find one, in order that the communication between us might be as speedy as possible; and in order that I might see the doctor, and receive assurances from him relative to her state. The nearest lodging that she could find was in Skinner-street, at the corner of a street leading to Smithfield. So that there she was, amidst the incessant rattle of coaches and butchers' carts, and the noise of cattle, dogs, and bawling men; instead of being in a quiet and commodious country-house, with neighbours and servants and every thing necessary about her. Yet, so great is the power of the mind in such cases, she, though the circumstances proved uncommonly perilous, and were attended with the loss of the child, bore her sufferings with the greatest composure, because, at any minute she could send a message to, and hear from, me. If she had gone to Botley, leaving me in that state of anxiety in which she saw me, I am satisfied that she would have died; and that event taking place at such a distance from me, how was I to contemplate her corpse, surrounded by her distracted children, and to have escaped death, or madness, myself? If such was not the effect of this merciless act of the government towards me, that amiable body may be well assured that I have taken and recorded the will for the deed, and that as such it will live in my memory as long as that memory shall last.
170. I make no apology for this account of my own conduct, because example is better than precept, and because I believe that my example may have weight with many thousands, as it has had in respect to early rising, abstinence, sobriety, industry, and mercy towards the poor. It is not, then, dangling about after a wife; it is not the loading her with baubles and trinkets; it is not the jaunting of her about from show to show, and from what is called pleasure to pleasure. It is none of these that endears you to her: it is the adherence to that part of the promise you have made her: 'With my body I thee worship;' that is to say, respect and honour by personal attention and acts of affection. And remember, that the greatest possible proof that you can give of real and solid affection is to give her your time, when not wanted in matters of business; when not wanted for the discharge of some duty, either towards the public or towards private persons. Amongst duties of this sort, we must, of course, in some ranks and circumstances of life, include the intercourse amongst friends and neighbours, which may frequently and reasonably call the husband from his home: but what are we to think of the husband who is in the habit of leaving his own fire-side, after the business of the day is over, and seeking promiscuous companions in the ale or the coffee house? I am told that, in France, it is rare to meet with a husband who does not spend every evening of his life in what is called a caffé; that is to say, a place for no other purpose than that of gossipping, drinking and gaming. And it is with great sorrow that I acknowledge that many English husbands indulge too much in a similar habit. Drinking clubs, smoking clubs, singing clubs, clubs of odd-fellows, whist clubs, sotting clubs: these are inexcusable, they are censurable, they are at once foolish and wicked, even in single men; what must they be, then, in husbands; and how are they to answer, not only to their wives, but to their children, for this profligate abandonment of their homes; this breach of their solemn vow made to the former, this evil example to the latter?
171. Innumerable are the miseries that spring from this cause. The expense is, in the first place, very considerable. I much question whether, amongst tradesmen, a shilling a night pays the average score; and that, too, for that which is really worth nothing at all, and cannot, even by possibility, be attended with any one single advantage, however small. Fifteen pounds a year thus thrown away, would amount, in the course of a tradesman's life, to a decent fortune for a child. Then there is the injury to health from these night adventures; there are the quarrels, there is the vicious habit of loose and filthy talk; there are the slanders and the back-bitings; there is the admiration of contemptible wit, and there are the scoffings at all that is sober and serious.
172. And does the husband who thus abandons his wife and children imagine that she will not, in some degree at least, follow his example? If he do, he is very much deceived. If she imitate him even in drinking, he has no great reason to complain; and then the cost may be two shillings the night instead of one, equal in amount to the cost of all the bread wanted in the family, while the baker's bill is, perhaps, unpaid. Here are the slanderings, too, going on at home; for, while the husbands are assembled, it would be hard if the wives were not to do the same; and the very least that is to be expected is, that the tea-pot should keep pace with the porter-pot or grog-glass. Hence crowds of female acquaintances and intruders, and all the consequent and inevitable squabbles which form no small part of the torment of the life of man.
173. If you have servants, they know to a moment the time of your absence; and they regulate their proceedings accordingly. 'Like master like man,' is an old and true proverb; and it is natural, if not just, that it should be thus; for it would be unjust if the careless and neglectful sot were served as faithfully as the vigilant, attentive and sober man. Late hours, cards and dice, are amongst the consequences of the master's absence; and why not, seeing that he is setting the example? Fire, candle, profligate visitants, expences, losses, children ruined in habits and morals, and, in short, a train of evils hardly to be enumerated, arise from this most vicious habit of the master spending his leisure time from home. But beyond all the rest is the ill-treatment of the wife. When left to ourselves we all seek the company that we like best; the company in which we take the most delight: and therefore every husband, be his state of life what it may, who spends his leisure time, or who, at least, is in the habit of doing it, in company other than that of his wife and family, tells her and them, as plainly by deeds as he could possibly do by words, that he takes more delight in other company than in theirs. Children repay this with disregard for their father; but to a wife of any sensibility, it is either a dagger to her heart or an incitement to revenge, and revenge, too, of a species which a young woman will seldom be long in want of the means to gratify. In conclusion of these remarks respecting absentee husbands, I would recommend all those who are prone to, or likely to fall into, the practice, to remember the words of Mrs. SULLEN, in the BEAUX' STRATAGEM: 'My husband,' says she, addressing a footman whom she had taken as a paramour, 'comes reeling home at midnight, tumbles in beside me as a salmon flounces in a net, oversets the economy of my bed, belches the fumes of his drink in my face, then twists himself round, leaving me half naked, and listening till morning to that tuneful nightingale, his nose.' It is at least forty-three years since I read the BEAUX' STRATAGEM, and I now quote from memory; but the passage has always occurred to me whenever I have seen a sottish husband; and though that species of revenge, for the taking of which the lady made this apology, was carrying the thing too far, yet I am ready to confess, that if I had to sit in judgment on her for taking even this revenge, my sentence would be very lenient; for what right has such a husband to expect fidelity? He has broken his vow; and by what rule of right has she to be bound to hers? She thought that she was marrying a man; and she finds that she was married to a beast. He has, indeed, committed no offence that the law of the land can reach; but he has violated the vow by which he obtained possession of her person; and, in the eye of justice, the compact between them is dissolved.
174. The way to avoid the sad consequences of which I have been speaking is to begin well: many a man has become a sottish husband, and brought a family to ruin, without being sottishly inclined, and without liking the gossip of the ale or coffee house. It is by slow degrees that the mischief is done. He is first inveigled, and, in time, he really likes the thing; and, when arrived at that point, he is incurable. Let him resolve, from the very first, never to spend an hour from home, unless business, or, at least, some necessary and rational purpose demand it. Where ought he to be, but with the person whom he himself hath chosen to be his partner for life, and the mother of his children? What other company ought he to deem so good and so fitting as this? With whom else can he so pleasantly spend his hours of leisure and relaxation? Besides, if he quit her to seek company more agreeable, is not she set at large by that act of his? What justice is there in confining her at home without any company at all, while he rambles forth in search of company more gay than he finds at home?
175. Let the young married man try the thing; let him resolve not to be seduced from his home; let him never go, in one single instance, unnecessarily from his own fire-side. Habit is a powerful thing; and if he begin right, the pleasure that he will derive from it will induce him to continue right. This is not being 'tied to the apron-strings,' which means quite another matter, as I shall show by-and-by. It is being at the husband's place, whether he have children or not. And is there any want of matter for conversation between a man and his wife? Why not talk of the daily occurrences to her, as well as to any body else; and especially to a company of tippling and noisy men? If you excuse yourself by saying that you go to read the newspaper, I answer, buy the newspaper, if you must read it: the cost is not half of what you spend per day at the pot-house; and then you have it your own, and may read it at your leisure, and your wife can read it as well as yourself, if read it you must. And, in short, what must that man be made of, who does not prefer sitting by his own fire-side with his wife and children, reading to them, or hearing them read, to hearing the gabble and balderdash of a club or a pot-house company!
176. Men must frequently be from home at all hours of the day and night. Sailors, soldiers, merchants, all men out of the common track of labour, and even some in the very lowest walks, are sometimes compelled by their affairs, or by circumstances, to be from their homes. But what I protest against is, the habit of spending leisure hours from home, and near to it; and doing this without any necessity, and by choice: liking the next door, or any house in the same street, better than your own. When absent from necessity, there is no wound given to the heart of the wife; she concludes that you would be with her if you could, and that satisfies; she laments the absence, but submits to it without complaining. Yet, in these cases, her feelings ought to be consulted as much as possible; she ought to be fully apprised of the probable duration of the absence, and of the time of return; and if these be dependent on circumstances, those circumstances ought to be fully stated; for you have no right to keep her mind upon the rack, when you have it in your power to put it in a state of ease. Few men have been more frequently taken from home by business, or by a necessity of some sort, than I have; and I can positively assert, that, as to my return, I never once disappointed my wife in the whole course of our married life. If the time of return was contingent, I never failed to keep her informed from day to day: if the time was fixed, or when it became fixed, my arrival was as sure as my life. Going from London to Botley, once, with Mr. FINNERTY, whose name I can never pronounce without an expression of my regard for his memory, we stopped at ALTON, to dine with a friend, who, delighted with Finnerty's talk, as every body else was, kept us till ten or eleven o'clock, and was proceeding to the other bottle, when I put in my protest, saying, 'We must go, my wife will be frightened.' 'Blood, man,' said Finnerty, 'you do not mean to go home to-night!' I told him I did; and then sent my son, who was with us, to order out the post-chaise. We had twenty-three miles to go, during which we debated the question, whether Mrs. COBBETT would be up to receive us, I contending for the affirmative, and he for the negative. She was up, and had a nice fire for us to sit down at. She had not committed the matter to a servant: her servants and children were all in bed; and she was up, to perform the duty of receiving her husband and his friend. 'You did not expect him?' said Finnerty. 'To be sure I did,' said she; 'he never disappointed me in his life.'
177. Now, if all young men knew how much value women set upon this species of fidelity, there would be fewer unhappy couples than there are. If men have appointments with lords, they never dream of breaking them; and I can assure them that wives are as sensitive in this respect as lords. I had seen many instances of conjugal unhappiness arising out of that carelessness which left wives in a state of uncertainty as to the movements of their husbands; and I took care, from the very outset, to guard against it. For no man has a right to sport with the feelings of any innocent person whatever, and particularly with those of one who has committed her happiness to his hands. The truth is, that men in general look upon women as having no feelings different from their own; and they know that they themselves would regard such disappointments as nothing. But this is a great mistake: women feel more acutely than men; their love is more ardent, more pure, more lasting, and they are more frank and sincere in the utterance of their feelings. They ought to be treated with due consideration had for all their amiable qualities and all their weaknesses, and nothing by which their minds are affected ought to be deemed a trifle.
178. When we consider what a young woman gives up on her wedding day; she makes a surrender, an absolute surrender, of her liberty, for the joint lives of the parties; she gives the husband the absolute right of causing her to live in what place, and in what manner and what society, he pleases; she gives him the power to take from her, and to use, for his own purposes, all her goods, unless reserved by some legal instrument; and, above all, she surrenders to him her person. Then, when we consider the pains which they endure for us, and the large share of all the anxious parental cares that fall to their lot; when we consider their devotion to us, and how unshaken their affection remains in our ailments, even though the most tedious and disgusting; when we consider the offices that they perform, and cheerfully perform, for us, when, were we left to one another, we should perish from neglect; when we consider their devotion to their children, how evidently they love them better, in numerous instances, than their own lives; when we consider these things, how can a just man think any thing a trifle that affects their happiness? I was once going, in my gig, up the hill, in the village of FRANKFORD, near Philadelphia, when a little girl, about two years old, who had toddled away from a small house, was lying basking in the sun, in the middle of the road. About two hundred yards before I got to the child, the teams, five big horses in each, of three wagons, the drivers of which had stopped to drink at a tavern on the brow of the hill, started off, and came, nearly abreast, galloping down the road. I got my gig off the road as speedily as I could; but expected to see the poor child crushed to pieces. A young man, a journeyman carpenter, who was shingling a shed by the side of the road, seeing the child, and seeing the danger, though a stranger to the parents, jumped from the top of the shed, ran into the road, and snatched up the child, from scarcely an inch before the hoof of the leading horse. The horse's leg knocked him down; but he, catching the child by its clothes, flung it back, out of the way of the other horses, and saved himself by rolling back with surprising agility. The mother of the child, who had, apparently, been washing, seeing the teams coming, and seeing the situation of the child, rushed out, and catching up the child, just as the carpenter had flung it back, and hugging it in her arms, uttered a shriek such as I never heard before, never heard since, and, I hope, shall never hear again; and then she dropped down, as if perfectly dead! By the application of the usual means, she was restored, however, in a little while; and I, being about to depart, asked the carpenter if he were a married man, and whether he were a relation of the parents of the child. He said he was neither: 'Well, then,' said I, 'you merit the gratitude of every father and mother in the world, and I will show mine, by giving you what I have,' pulling out the nine or ten dollars that I had in my pocket. 'No; I thank you, Sir,' said he: 'I have only done what it was my duty to do.'
179. Bravery, disinterestedness, and maternal affection surpassing these, it is impossible to imagine. The mother was going right in amongst the feet of these powerful and wild horses, and amongst the wheels of the wagons. She had no thought for herself; no feeling of fear for her own life; her shriek was the sound of inexpressible joy; joy too great for her to support herself under. Perhaps ninety-nine mothers out of every hundred would have acted the same part, under similar circumstances. There are, comparatively, very few women not replete with maternal love; and, by-the-by, take you care, if you meet with a girl who 'is not fond of children,' not to marry her by any means. Some few there are who even make a boast that they 'cannot bear children,' that is, cannot endure them. I never knew a man that was good for much who had a dislike to little children; and I never knew a woman of that taste who was good for any thing at all. I have seen a few such in the course of my life, and I have never wished to see one of them a second time.
180. Being fond of little children argues no effeminacy in a man, but, as far as my observation has gone, the contrary. A regiment of soldiers presents no bad school wherein to study character. Soldiers have leisure, too, to play with children, as well as with 'women and dogs,' for which the proverb has made them famed. And I have never observed that effeminacy was at all the marked companion of fondness for little children. This fondness manifestly arises from a compassionate feeling towards creatures that are helpless, and that must be innocent. For my own part, how many days, how many months, all put together, have I spent with babies in my arms! My time, when at home, and when babies were going on, was chiefly divided between the pen and the baby. I have fed them and put them to sleep hundreds of times, though there were servants to whom the task might have been transferred. Yet, I have not been effeminate; I have not been idle; I have not been a waster of time; but I should have been all these if I had disliked babies, and had liked the porter pot and the grog glass.
181. It is an old saying, 'Praise the child, and you make love to the mother;' and it is surprising how far this will go. To a fond mother you can do nothing so pleasing as to praise the baby, and, the younger it is, the more she values the compliment. Say fine things to her, and take no notice of her baby, and she will despise you. I have often beheld this, in many women, with great admiration; and it is a thing that no husband ought to overlook; for if the wife wish her child to be admired by others, what must be the ardour of her wishes with regard to his admiration. There was a drunken dog of a Norfolk man in our regiment, who came from Thetford, I recollect, who used to say, that his wife would forgive him for spending all the pay, and the washing money into the bargain, 'if he would but kiss her ugly brat, and say it was pretty.' Now, though this was a very profligate fellow, he had philosophy in him; and certain it is, that there is nothing worthy of the name of conjugal happiness, unless the husband clearly evince that he is fond of his children, and that, too, from their very birth.
182. But though all the aforementioned considerations demand from us the kindest possible treatment of a wife, the husband is to expect dutiful deportment at her hands. He is not to be her slave; he is not to yield to her against the dictates of his own reason and judgment; it is her duty to obey all his lawful commands; and, if she have sense, she will perceive that it is a disgrace to herself to acknowledge, as a husband, a thing over which she has an absolute controul. It should always be recollected that you are the party whose body must, if any do, lie in jail for debt, and for debts of her contracting, too, as well as of your own contracting. Over her tongue, too, you possess a clear right to exercise, if necessary, some controul; for if she use it in an unjustifiable manner, it is against you, and not against her, that the law enables, and justly enables, the slandered party to proceed; which would be monstrously unjust, if the law were not founded on the right which the husband has to control, if necessary, the tongue of the wife, to compel her to keep it within the limits prescribed by the law. A charming, a most enchanting, life, indeed, would be that of a husband, if he were bound to cohabit with and to maintain one for all the debts and all the slanders of whom he was answerable, and over whose conduct he possessed no compulsory controul.
183. Of the remedies in the case of really bad wives, squanderers, drunkards, adultresses, I shall speak further on; it being the habit of us all to put off to the last possible moment the performance of disagreeable duties. But, far short of these vices, there are several faults in a wife that may, if not cured in time, lead to great unhappiness, great injury to the interests as well as character of her husband and children; and which faults it is, therefore, the husband's duty to correct. A wife may be chaste, sober in the full sense of the word, industrious, cleanly, frugal, and may be devoted to her husband and her children to a degree so enchanting as to make them all love her beyond the power of words to express. And yet she may, partly under the influence of her natural disposition, and partly encouraged by the great and constant homage paid to her virtues, and presuming, too, on the pain with which she knows her will would be thwarted; she may, with all her virtues, be thus led to a bold interference in the affairs of her husband; may attempt to dictate to him in matters quite out of her own sphere; and, in the pursuit of the gratification of her love of power and command, may wholly overlook the acts of folly or injustice which she would induce her husband to commit, and overlook, too, the contemptible thing that she is making the man whom it is her duty to honour and obey, and the abasement of whom cannot take place without some portion of degradation falling upon herself. At the time when 'THE BOOK' came out, relative to the late ill-treated QUEEN CAROLINE, I was talking upon the subject, one day, with a parson, who had not read the Book, but who, as was the fashion with all those who were looking up to the government, condemned the Queen unheard. 'Now,' said I, 'be not so shamefully unjust; but get the book, read it, and then give your judgment.'—'Indeed,' said his wife, who was sitting by, 'but HE SHA'N'T,' pronouncing the words sha'n't with an emphasis and a voice tremendously masculine. 'Oh!' said I, 'if he SHA'N'T, that is another matter; but, if he sha'n't read, if he sha'n't hear the evidence, he sha'n't be looked upon, by me, as a just judge; and I sha'n't regard him, in future, as having any opinion of his own in any thing.' All which the husband, the poor henpecked thing, heard without a word escaping his lips.
184. A husband thus under command, is the most contemptible of God's creatures. Nobody can place reliance on him for any thing; whether in the capacity of employer or employed, you are never sure of him. No bargain is firm, no engagement sacred, with such a man. Feeble as a reed before the boisterous she-commander, he is bold in injustice towards those whom it pleases her caprice to mark out for vengeance. In the eyes of neighbours, for friends such a man cannot have, in the eyes of servants, in the eyes of even the beggars at his door, such a man is a mean and despicable creature, though he may roll in wealth and possess great talents into the bargain. Such a man has, in fact, no property; he has nothing that he can rightly call his own; he is a beggarly dependent under his own roof; and if he have any thing of the man left in him, and if there be rope or river near, the sooner he betakes him to the one or the other the better. How many men, how many families, have I known brought to utter ruin only by the husband suffering himself to be subdued, to be cowed down, to be held in fear, of even a virtuous wife! What, then, must be the lot of him who submits to a commander who, at the same time, sets all virtue at defiance!
185. Women are a sisterhood. They make common cause in behalf of the sex; and, indeed, this is natural enough, when we consider the vast power that the law gives us over them. The law is for us, and they combine, wherever they can, to mitigate its effects. This is perfectly natural, and, to a certain extent, laudable, evincing fellow-feeling and public spirit: but when carried to the length of 'he sha'n't,' it is despotism on the one side and slavery on the other. Watch, therefore, the incipient steps of encroachment; and they come on so slowly, so softly, that you must be sharp-sighted if you perceive them; but the moment you do perceive them: your love will blind for too long a time; but the moment you do perceive them, put at once an effectual stop to their progress. Never mind the pain that it may give you: a day of pain at this time will spare you years of pain in time to come. Many a man has been miserable, and made his wife miserable too, for a score or two of years, only for want of resolution to bear one day of pain: and it is a great deal to bear; it is a great deal to do to thwart the desire of one whom you so dearly love, and whose virtues daily render her more and more dear to you. But (and this is one of the most admirable of the mother's traits) as she herself will, while the tears stream from her eyes, force the nauseous medicine down the throat of her child, whose every cry is a dagger to her heart; as she herself has the courage to do this for the sake of her child, why should you flinch from the performance of a still more important and more sacred duty towards herself, as well as towards you and your children?
186. Am I recommending tyranny? Am I recommending disregard of the wife's opinions and wishes? Am I recommending a reserve towards her that would seem to say that she was not trust-worthy, or not a party interested in her husband's affairs? By no means: on the contrary, though I would keep any thing disagreeable from her, I should not enjoy the prospect of good without making her a participator. But reason says, and God has said, that it is the duty of wives to be obedient to their husbands; and the very nature of things prescribes that there must be a head of every house, and an undivided authority. And then it is so clearly just that the authority should rest with him on whose head rests the whole responsibility, that a woman, when patiently reasoned with on the subject, must be a virago in her very nature not to submit with docility to the terms of her marriage vow.
187. There are, in almost every considerable neighbourhood, a little squadron of she-commanders, generally the youngish wives of old or weak-minded men, and generally without children. These are the tutoresses of the young wives of the vicinage; they, in virtue of their experience, not only school the wives, but scold the husbands; they teach the former how to encroach and the latter how to yield: so that if you suffer this to go quietly on, you are soon under the care of a comité as completely as if you were insane. You want no comité: reason, law, religion, the marriage vow; all these have made you head, have given you full power to rule your family, and if you give up your right, you deserve the contempt that assuredly awaits you, and also the ruin that is, in all probability, your doom.
188. Taking it for granted that you will not suffer more than a second or third session of the female comité, let me say a word or two about the conduct of men in deciding between the conflicting opinions of husbands and wives. When a wife has a point to carry, and finds herself hard pushed, or when she thinks it necessary to call to her aid all the force she can possibly muster, one of her resources is, the vote on her side of all her husband's visiting friends. 'My husband thinks so and so, and I think so and so; now, Mr. Tomkins, don't you think I am right?' To be sure he does; and so does Mr. Jenkins, and so does Wilkins, and so does Mr. Dickins, and you would swear that they were all her kins. Now this is very foolish, to say the least of it. None of these complaisant kins would like this in their own case. It is the fashion to say aye to all that a woman asserts, or contends for, especially in contradiction to her husband; and a very pernicious fashion it is. It is, in fact, not to pay her a compliment worthy of acceptance, but to treat her as an empty and conceited fool; and no sensible woman will, except from mere inadvertence, make the appeal. This fashion, however, foolish and contemptible as it is in itself, is attended, very frequently, with serious consequences. Backed by the opinions of her husband's friends, the wife returns to the charge with redoubled vigour and obstinacy; and if you do not yield, ten to one but a quarrel is the result; or, at least, something approaching towards it. A gentleman at whose house I was, about five years ago, was about to take a farm for his eldest son, who was a very fine young man, about eighteen years old. The mother, who was as virtuous and as sensible a woman as I have ever known, wished him to be 'in the law.' There were six or eight intimate friends present, and all unhesitatingly joined the lady, thinking it a pity that HARRY, who had had 'such a good education,' should be buried in a farm-house. 'And don't you think so too, Mr. Cobbett,' said the lady, with great earnestness. 'Indeed, Ma'am,' said I, 'I should think it very great presumption in me to offer any opinion at all, and especially in opposition to the known decision of the father, who is the best judge, and the only rightful judge, in such a case.' This was a very sensible and well-behaved woman, and I still respect her very highly; but I could perceive that I instantly dropped out of her good graces. Harry, however, I was glad to hear, went 'to be buried in the farm-house.'
189. 'A house divided against itself,' or, rather, in itself, 'cannot stand;' and it is divided against itself if there be a divided authority. The wife ought to be heard, and patiently heard; she ought to be reasoned with, and, if possible, convinced; but if, after all endeavours in this way, she remain opposed to the husband's opinion, his will must be obeyed; or he, at once, becomes nothing; she is, in fact, the master, and he is nothing but an insignificant inmate. As to matters of little comparative moment; as to what shall be for dinner; as to how the house shall be furnished; as to the management of the house and of menial servants; as to these matters, and many others, the wife may have her way without any danger; but when the questions are, what is to be the calling to be pursued; what is to be the place of residence; what is to be the style of living and scale of expence; what is to be done with property; what the manner and place of educating children; what is to be their calling or state of life; who are to be employed or entrusted by the husband; what are the principles that he is to adopt as to public matters; whom he is to have for coadjutors or friends; all these must be left solely to the husband; in all these he must have his will; or there never can be any harmony in the family.
190. Nevertheless, in some of these concerns, wives should be heard with a great deal of attention, especially in the affairs of choosing your male acquaintances and friends and associates. Women are more quick-sighted than men; they are less disposed to confide in persons upon a first acquaintance; they are more suspicious as to motives; they are less liable to be deceived by professions and protestations; they watch words with a more scrutinizing ear, and looks with a keener eye; and, making due allowance for their prejudices in particular cases, their opinions and remonstrances, with regard to matters of this sort, ought not to be set at naught without great deliberation. LOUVET, one of the Brissotins, who fled for their lives in the time of ROBESPIERRE; this LOUVET, in his narrative, entitled 'Mes Perils' and which I read, for the first time, to divert my mind from the perils of the yellow-fever, in Philadelphia, but with which I was so captivated as to have read it many times since; this writer, giving an account of his wonderful dangers and escapes, relates, that being on his way to Paris from the vicinity of Bordeaux, and having no regular passport, fell lame, but finally crept on to a miserable pot-house, in a small town in the Limosin. The landlord questioned him with regard to who and what he was and whence he came and was satisfied with his answers. But the landlady, who had looked sharply at him on his arrival, whispered a little boy, who ran away, and quickly returned with the mayor of the town. LOUVET soon discovered that there was no danger in the mayor, who could not decipher his forged passport, and who, being well plied with wine, wanted to hear no more of the matter. The landlady, perceiving this, slipped out and brought a couple of aldermen, who asked to see the passport. 'O, yes; but drink first.' Then there was a laughing story to tell over again, at the request of the half-drunken mayor; then a laughing and more drinking; the passport in LOUVET'S hand, but never opened, and, while another toast was drinking, the passport slid back quietly into the pocket; the woman looking furious all the while. At last, the mayor, the aldermen, and the landlord, all nearly drunk, shook hands with LOUVET, and wished him a good journey, swore he was a true sans culotte; but, he says, that the 'sharp-sighted woman, who was to be deceived by none of his stories or professions, saw him get off with deep and manifest disappointment and chagrin.' I have thought of this many times since, when I have had occasion to witness the quick-sightedness and penetration of women. The same quality that makes them, as they notoriously are, more quick in discovering expedients in cases of difficulty, makes them more apt to penetrate into motives and character.
191. I now come to a matter of the greatest possible importance; namely, that great troubler of the married state, that great bane of families, JEALOUSY; and I shall first speak of jealousy in the wife. This is always an unfortunate thing, and sometimes fatal. Yet, if there be a great propensity towards it, it is very difficult to be prevented. One thing, however, every husband can do in the way of prevention; and that is, to give no ground for it. And here, it is not sufficient that he strictly adhere to his marriage vow; he ought further to abstain from every art, however free from guilt, calculated to awaken the slightest degree of suspicion in a mind, the peace of which he is bound by every tie of justice and humanity not to disturb, or, if he can avoid it, to suffer it to be disturbed by others. A woman that is very fond of her husband, and this is the case with nine-tenths of English and American women, does not like to share with another any, even the smallest portion, not only of his affection, but of his assiduities and applause; and, as the bestowing of them on another, and receiving payment in kind, can serve no purpose other than of gratifying one's vanity, they ought to be abstained from, and especially if the gratification be to be purchased with even the chance of exciting uneasiness in her, whom it is your sacred duty to make as happy as you can.
192. For about two or three years after I was married, I, retaining some of my military manners, used, both in France and America, to romp most famously with the girls that came in my way; till one day, at Philadelphia, my wife said to me, in a very gentle manner, 'Don't do that: I do not like it.' That was quite enough: I had never thought on the subject before: one hair of her head was more dear to me than all the other women in the world, and this I knew that she knew; but I now saw that this was not all that she had a right to from me; I saw, that she had the further claim upon me that I should abstain from every thing that might induce others to believe that there was any other woman for whom, even if I were at liberty, I had any affection. I beseech young married men to bear this in mind; for, on some trifle of this sort, the happiness or misery of a long life frequently turns. If the mind of a wife be disturbed on this score, every possible means ought to be used to restore it to peace; and though her suspicions be perfectly groundless; though they be wild as the dreams of madmen; though they may present a mixture of the furious and the ridiculous, still they are to be treated with the greatest lenity and tenderness; and if, after all, you fail, the frailty is to be lamented as a misfortune, and not punished as a fault, seeing that it must have its foundation in a feeling towards you, which it would be the basest of ingratitude, and the most ferocious of cruelty, to repay by harshness of any description.
193. As to those husbands who make the unjust suspicions of their wives a justification for making those suspicions just; as to such as can make a sport of such suspicions, rather brag of them than otherwise, and endeavour to aggravate rather than assuage them; as to such I have nothing to say, they being far without the scope of any advice that I can offer. But to such as are not of this description, I have a remark or two to offer with respect to measures of prevention.
194. And, first, I never could see the sense of its being a piece of etiquette, a sort of mark of good breeding, to make it a rule that man and wife are not to sit side by side in a mixed company; that if a party walk out, the wife is to give her arm to some other than her husband; that if there be any other hand near, his is not to help to a seat or into a carriage. I never could see the sense of this; but I have always seen the nonsense of it plainly enough; it is, in short, amongst many other foolish and mischievous things that we do in aping the manners of those whose riches (frequently ill-gotten) and whose power embolden them to set, with impunity, pernicious examples; and to their examples this nation owes more of its degradation in morals than to any other source. The truth is, that this is a piece of false refinement: it, being interpreted, means, that so free are the parties from a liability to suspicion, so innately virtuous and pure are they, that each man can safely trust his wife with another man, and each woman her husband with another woman. But this piece of false refinement, like all others, overshoots its mark; it says too much; for it says that the parties have lewd thoughts in their minds. This is not the fact, with regard to people in general; but it must have been the origin of this set of consummately ridiculous and contemptible rules.
195. Now I would advise a young man, especially if he have a pretty wife, not to commit her unnecessarily to the care of any other man; not to be separated from her in this studious and ceremonious manner; and not to be ashamed to prefer her company and conversation to that of any other woman. I never could discover any good-breeding in setting another man, almost expressly, to poke his nose up in the face of my wife, and talk nonsense to her; for, in such cases, nonsense it generally is. It is not a thing of much consequence, to be sure; but when the wife is young, especially, it is not seemly, at any rate, and it cannot possibly lead to any good, though it may not lead to any great evil. And, on the other hand, you may be quite sure that, whatever she may seem to think of the matter, she will not like you the better for your attentions of this sort to other women, especially if they be young and handsome: and as this species of fashionable nonsense can do you no good, why gratify your love of talk, or the vanity of any woman, at even the risk of exciting uneasiness in that mind of which it is your most sacred duty to preserve, if you can, the uninterrupted tranquillity.
196. The truth is, that the greatest security of all against jealousy in a wife is to show, to prove, by your acts, by your words also, but more especially by your acts, that you prefer her to all the world; and, as I said before, I know of no act that is, in this respect, equal to spending in her company every moment of your leisure time. Every body knows, and young wives better than any body else, that people, who can choose, will be where they like best to be, and that they will be along with those whose company they best like. The matter is very plain, then, and I do beseech you to bear it in mind. Nor do I see the use, or sense, of keeping a great deal of company, as it is called. What company can a young man and woman want more than their two selves, and their children, if they have any? If here be not company enough, it is but a sad affair. The pernicious cards are brought forth by the company-keeping, the rival expenses, the sittings up late at night, the seeing of 'the ladies home,' and a thousand squabbles and disagreeable consequences. But, the great thing of all is, that this hankering after company, proves, clearly proves, that you want something beyond the society of your wife; and that she is sure to feel most acutely: the bare fact contains an imputation against her, and it is pretty sure to lay the foundation of jealousy, or of something still worse.
197. If acts of kindness in you are necessary in all cases, they are especially so in cases of her illness, from whatever cause arising. I will not suppose myself to be addressing any husband capable of being unconcerned while his wife's life is in the most distant danger from illness, though it has been my very great mortification to know in my life time, two or three brutes of this description; but, far short of this degree of brutality, a great deal of fault may be committed. When men are ill, they feel every neglect with double anguish, and, what then must be in such cases the feelings of women, whose ordinary feelings are so much more acute than those of men; what must be their feelings in case of neglect in illness, and especially if the neglect come from the husband! Your own heart will, I hope, tell you what those feelings must be, and will spare me the vain attempt to describe them; and, if it do thus instruct you, you will want no arguments from me to induce you, at such a season, to prove the sincerity of your affection by every kind word and kind act that your mind can suggest. This is the time to try you; and, be you assured, that the impression left on her mind now will be the true and lasting impression; and, if it be good, will be a better preservative against her being jealous, than ten thousand of your professions ten thousand times repeated. In such a case, you ought to spare no expense that you can possibly afford; you ought to neglect nothing that your means will enable you to do; for, what is the use of money if it be not to be expended in this case? But, more than all the rest, is your own personal attention. This is the valuable thing; this is the great balm to the sufferer, and, it is efficacious in proportion as it is proved to be sincere. Leave nothing to other hands that you can do yourself; the mind has a great deal to do in all the ailments of the body, and, bear in mind, that, whatever be the event, you have a more than ample reward. I cannot press this point too strongly upon you; the bed of sickness presents no charms, no allurements, and women know this well; they watch, in such a case, your every word and every look: and now it is that their confidence is secured, or their suspicions excited, for life.
198. In conclusion of these remarks, as to jealousy in a wife, I cannot help expressing my abhorrence of those husbands who treat it as a matter for ridicule. To be sure, infidelity in a man is less heinous than infidelity in the wife; but still, is the marriage vow nothing? Is a promise solemnly made before God, and in the face of the world, nothing? Is a violation of a contract, and that, too, with a feebler party, nothing of which a man ought to be ashamed? But, besides all these, there is the cruelty. First, you win, by great pains, perhaps, a woman's affections; then, in order to get possession of her person, you marry her; then, after enjoyment, you break your vow, you bring upon her the mixed pity and jeers of the world, and thus you leave her to weep out her life. Murder is more horrible than this, to be sure, and the criminal law, which punishes divers other crimes, does not reach this; but, in the eye of reason and of moral justice, it is surpassed by very few of those crimes. Passion may be pleaded, and so it may, for almost every other crime of which man can be guilty. It is not a crime against nature; nor are any of these which men commit in consequence of their necessities. The temptation is great; and is not the temptation great when men thieve or rob? In short, there is no excuse for an act so unjust and so cruel, and the world is just as to this matter; for, I have always observed, that, however men are disposed to laugh at these breaches of vows in men, the act seldom fails to produce injury to the whole character; it leaves, after all the joking, a stain, and, amongst those who depend on character for a livelihood, it often produces ruin. At the very least, it makes an unhappy and wrangling family; it makes children despise or hate their fathers, and it affords an example at the thought of the ultimate consequences of which a father ought to shudder. In such a case, children will take part, and they ought to take part, with the mother: she is the injured party; the shame brought upon her attaches, in part, to them: they feel the injustice done them; and, if such a man, when the grey hairs, and tottering knees, and piping voice come, look round him in vain for a prop, let him, at last, be just, and acknowledge that he has now the due reward of his own wanton cruelty to one whom he had solemnly sworn to love and to cherish to the last hour of his or her life.
199. But, bad as is conjugal infidelity in the husband, it is much worse in the wife: a proposition that it is necessary to maintain by the force of reason, because the women, as a sisterhood, are prone to deny the truth of it. They say that adultery is adultery, in men as well as in them; and that, therefore, the offence is as great in the one case as in the other. As a crime, abstractedly considered, it certainly is; but, as to the consequences, there is a wide difference. In both cases, there is the breach of a solemn vow, but, there is this great distinction, that the husband, by his breach of that vow, only brings shame upon his wife and family; whereas the wife, by a breach of her vow, may bring the husband a spurious offspring to maintain, and may bring that spurious offspring to rob of their fortunes, and in some cases of their bread, her legitimate children. So that here is a great and evident wrong done to numerous parties, besides the deeper disgrace inflicted in this case than in the other.
200. And why is the disgrace deeper? Because here is a total want of delicacy; here is, in fact, prostitution; here is grossness and filthiness of mind; here is every thing that argues baseness of character. Women should be, and they are, except in few instances, far more reserved and more delicate than men; nature bids them be such; the habits and manners of the world confirm this precept of nature; and therefore, when they commit this offence, they excite loathing, as well as call for reprobation. In the countries where a plurality of wives is permitted, there is no plurality of husbands. It is there thought not at all indelicate for a man to have several wives; but the bare thought of a woman having two husbands would excite horror. The widows of the Hindoos burn themselves in the pile that consumes their husbands; but the Hindoo widowers do not dispose of themselves in this way. The widows devote their bodies to complete destruction, lest, even after the death of their husbands, they should be tempted to connect themselves with other men; and though this is carrying delicacy far indeed, it reads to Christian wives a lesson not unworthy of their attention; for, though it is not desirable that their bodies should be turned into handfuls of ashes, even that transmutation were preferable to that infidelity which fixes the brand of shame on the cheeks of their parents, their children, and on those of all who ever called them friend.