"Manners are of more importance than laws. Upon these, in a great measure, the laws depend. The law teaches us but here and there, now and then. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in. They give their whole form and colour to our lives. According to their quality, they aid morals, they supply laws, or they totally destroy them."—Burke.
About twelve thousand police in London are able to take care of about four million people. How is it done? Chiefly by moral force, and, above all, by civility. Sir Edmund Henderson, the Chief Commissioner of the force, said on a recent occasion that it was by "strict attention to duty, by sobriety, and, above all, by civility," that the police endeavoured to do their duty. "I lay great stress upon civility," said the Chief Commissioner, "for I think it is the great characteristic of the metropolitan police force."
If civility and politeness have such an influence upon the hard, rough world of London how much greater will be the effect of good manners or beautiful behaviour, not only in rendering comparatively safe the many difficult crossings in the path of newly-married people, but also in adorning even the smallest details of family life! True courtesy exhibits itself in a disposition to contribute to the happiness of others, and in refraining from all that may annoy them. And the cultivation day by day of this sweet reasonableness is almost as necessary to the comfort of those who live together as the daily calls of the milkman and the baker. If no two people have it so much in their power to torment each other as husband and wife, it is their bounden duty to guard against this liability by cultivating the habit of domestic politeness. It is a mistake to suppose that the forms of courtesy can be safely dispensed with in the family circle. With the disappearance of the forms the reality will too often disappear. The very effort of appearing bright under adverse circumstances is sure to render cheerfulness easier on another occasion.
Good manners like good words cost little and are worth much. They oil the machinery of social life, but more especially of domestic life. If a cheerful "good morning" and "good evening" conciliate strangers they are not lost upon a wife. Hardness and repulsiveness of manner originate in want of respect for the feelings of others.
"Remember," says Sydney Smith, "that your children, your wife, and your servants have rights and feelings; treat them as you would treat persons who could turn again. Do not attempt to frighten children and inferiors by passion; it does more harm to your own character than it does good to them. Passion gets less and less powerful after every defeat. Husband energy for the real demand which the dangers of life make upon it." Good manners are more than "surface Christianity." Rowland Hill was right when he said, "I do not think much of a man's religion unless his dog and cat are the happier for it."
"Woman was made out of a rib from the side of Adam—not out of his head to top him, not out of his feet to be trampled on by him, but out of his side to be equal to him: under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be loved."
"Use the woman tenderly, tenderly;
From a crooked rib God made her slenderly:
Straight and strong He did not make her,
So if you try to bend you'll break her."
Men are cautioned by the Jewish Talmud to be careful lest they cause women to weep, "for God counts their tears."
There are some people who stretch their manners to such an unnatural degree in society that they are pretty sure to go to the opposite extreme when relaxing at home. Feeling released from something that was hanging over them they run wild and become rude in consequence of their late restraint.
Is it not, to say the least, probable that such patient humility as the following would be followed by a reaction? Bishop Thirlwall was generally regarded, except by the small circle of those who knew him intimately, with much awe by his clergy, who thought that they had better keep as far as possible out of the way of their terribly logical and rather sarcastic diocesan. The legend was that he had trained a highly sagacious dog into the habit of detecting and biting intrusive curates. An amusing story is told of a humble-minded Levite who was staying at Abergwili Palace on the occasion of an ordination. An egg was placed before him, which, on tapping, proved a very bad one indeed. The Bishop made a kindly apology, and told a servant to bring a fresh one. "No, thank you, my lord," replied the young clergyman, with a penitential expression of countenance; "it is quite good enough for me." We think that the clergyman's wife would have acted rashly if, soon after this occurrence, she should have tried the patience of her Job with an antiquated egg.
The proverb "familiarity breeds contempt" suggests another reason why the manners displayed at home are not, generally speaking, as good as they should be.
There is generally greater harmony when a husband's duties necessitate his remaining several hours of the day from home. "For this relief, much thanks!" will be the not unnatural sentiment of a grateful wife. And to the husband, on his return, home will appear far sweeter than if he had idled about the house all day with nothing to do but torment his wife. Richter says that distance injures love less than nearness. People are more polite when they do not see too much of each other.
Madam! no gentleman is entitled to such distinguished consideration as your husband. Sir! no lady is entitled to such deferential treatment as your wife.
Awkward consequences that could not have been foreseen have sometimes followed domestic rudeness. It is related of Lord Ellenborough that, when on one occasion he was about to set out on circuit, his wife expressed a wish to accompany him; a proposition to which his lordship assented, provided there were no bandboxes tucked under the seat of his carriage, as he had too often found there had been when honoured with her ladyship's company before. Accordingly they both set out together, but had not proceeded very far before the judge, stretching out his legs under the seat in front of him, kicked against one of the flimsy receptacles which he had specially prohibited. Down went the window with a bang and out went the bandbox into the ditch. The startled coachman immediately commenced to pull up, but was ordered to drive on and let the thing lie where it was. They reached the assize town in due course, and his lordship proceeded to robe for the court. "And now, where's my wig?—where's my wig?" he demanded, when everything else had been donned. "Your wig, my lord," replied the servant, tremulously, "was in that bandbox your lordship threw out of the window as we came along."
Sir Robert Walpole used to say that he never despaired of making up a quarrel between women unless one of them had called the other old or ugly. In the same way married people need not despair of realizing truly united and therefore happy lives if they will only study each other's weak points, as skaters look out for the weak parts of the ice, in order to keep off them.
Nothing is more unmanly as well as unmannerly than for a husband to speak disparagingly of either his wife or of the marriage state before strangers. Lord Erskine once declared at a large party that "a wife was a tin canister tied to one's tail;" upon which Sheridan, who was present when the remark was made, presented to Lady Erskine the following lines:
"Lord Erskine, at woman presuming to rail,
Calls a wife a tin canister tied to one's tail;
And fair Lady Anne, while the subject he carries on,
Seems hurt at his lordship's degrading comparison.
But wherefore degrading? Considered aright,
A canister's polished and useful and bright;
And should dirt its original purity hide,
That's the fault of the puppy to whom it is tied."
The "puppy" only got what he deserved.
When a husband happens to be a mere goose, happy if only a goose, though he may keep up the delusion that he is the "head of the family," it becomes the wife's duty to exercise real control. But she may be a responsible Prime Minister without usurping, much less parading, the insignia of Royalty. And if she have the feelings of a gentlewoman she will not allow every one to see the reins of government in her hand as did a colonel's wife known to me, of whom even the privates and drummer boys in her husband's (?) regiment used to say: "Mrs. ——, she's the colonel." What Burke said of his wife's eyes describe woman's proper place in the domestic Cabinet: "Her eyes have a mild light, but they awe when she pleases; they command, like a good man out of office, not by authority, but by virtue." Too often it is the poor wife who has to bear the heaviest part of the burdens of domestic life while the unchivalrous husband struts before as head of the house quite unencumbered.
Even the youngest child may claim to be treated with politeness. "I feel," said President Garfield, "a profounder reverence for a boy than for a man. I never meet a ragged boy in the street without feeling that I may owe him a salute, for I know not what possibilities may be buttoned up under his coat." Fathers should look upon their children with respect, for he who is "only a child" may become a much better and greater man than his father.
Without spoiling our children we should make their lives as pleasant as we possibly can, always remembering that the poor things never asked to be born, and that they may "not long remain." The boy dies perhaps at the age of ten or twelve. Of what use then all the restraints, all the privations, all the pain, that you have inflicted upon him? He falls, and leaves your mind to brood over the possibility of your having abridged a life so dear to you.
For good and for evil home is a school of manners. Children reflect, as in a mirror, not only the general habits and characters of their parents, but even their manner of gesture and of speech. "A fig-tree looking on a fig-tree becometh fruitful." If "a gentleman always a gentleman" and "a lady always a lady" are the examples set by papa and mamma, the children will take them in almost through the pores of the skin.
"For the child," says Richter, "the most important era of life is that of childhood, when he begins to colour and mould himself by companionship with others. Every new educator affects less than his predecessor, until at last, if we regard all life as an educational institution, a circumnavigator of the world is less influenced by all the nations he has seen than by his nurse."
"Love is sunshine."—Longfellow.
"God wishes us to have sunlight in our homes. He would have in them a tender play of laughter and humour, a pleasant interchange of light and colour and warmth, in word and mirth, which makes the brightness perfect, and is as much the work of the sunlight in the house, as the delightful gaiety of nature is the doing of the sun."—Stopford Brooke.
It is a comparatively easy thing to preserve a cheerful appearance when away from home, or even to present a brave front to meet the great emergencies of life. And yet the most genial-hearted of diners-out may be a domestic bully in the privacy of his own household; and the hero who has faced a battery without shrinking may be unable to take a cup of lukewarm coffee from his wife's hands without a grumble. The real happiness of a home depends upon a determination to lay no undue stress upon little matters, and a resolve to hold one's own irritability in constant check. For it is the sum of trivial affairs that make up the day's account, and it is the—
"Cares that petty shadows cast,
By which our lives are chiefly proved."
True home sunshine, if it consistently brighten the features of one member in a family, is pretty sure to be reflected from the faces of the rest.
"I thought," said a father, the other day, "as I sat in the railway carriage on my way home, of my impatience with the members of my family, and I felt ashamed. As soon as they are out of my sight I see clearly where my mistakes are; but when they are around me I forget my good resolutions."
It is quite true that the dear ones at home are more to us than Kings and Queens, than House of Lords or House of Commons, than the mightiest and noblest in the world. And yet we often treat them worse than we treat strangers. With others, whom we meet in business or in society, we are half unconsciously on our guard. Hasty words are repressed, and frowns are banished. But the dear ones at home usually have the pleasure or the pain of seeing us precisely as we are in the mood of the moment. To their sorrow we "make no strangers" of them. If our nerves are overstrung, or our tempers tried, so far from endeavouring to conceal the fact we make them feel it. The hero in great crises may be moved by the pressure of small annoyances to throw a boot at his valet de chambre, or to snarl at his wife. Individually these faults of temper may be small, but so are the locusts that collectively conceal the sun. "Only perfection can bear with imperfection." The better a man becomes the more allowance will he make for the shortcomings of others.
In order to have sunlight at home, it is not enough negatively to abstain from fault-finding and general peevishness. We should recognize praise as a positive duty. If a thing is done wrongly, better sometimes to say nothing about it. Wait until it happens to be done rightly, and then give marked praise. The third time, the charm of your approbation will produce a much better performance. If it is possible to "damn with faint praise," how much more damaging must be—no praise at all. How much potential goodness and greatness would become actual but for the wet blanket of sullen silence! "As we must account for every idle word, so we must for every idle silence." This saying of Franklin should suggest speech in season to ungrateful husbands who never throw a word of encouragement to their wives however deserving. In military riding schools may often be heard the command—"Make much of your horses!" The horses have been trotting, galloping, and jumping. They have had to stand quietly while the men dismounted and fired their carbines kneeling before them. They have gone through their parts well, so after the men have again mounted, the order is given—"Make much of your horses!" and all the riders pat simultaneously the proudly-arched necks of their deserving steeds. Husbands, take the hint and make much of your wives!
We may here introduce some words of Miss Cobbe in reference to the moral atmosphere of the house, which depends so immensely on the tone of the mistress. "I conceive that good, and even high animal spirits are among the most blessed of possessions—actual wings to bear us up over the dusty or muddy roads of life; and I think that to keep up the spirits of a household is not only indefinitely to add to its happiness, but also to make all duties comparatively light and easy. Thus, however naturally depressed a mistress may be, I think she ought to struggle to be cheerful, and to take pains never to quench the blessed spirits of her children or guests. All of us who live long in great cities get into a sort of subdued-cheerfulness tone. We are neither very sad nor very glad; we neither cry, nor ever enjoy that delicious experience of helpless laughter, the fou rira which is the joy of youth. I wish we could be more really light of heart." We all share this wish; but how is it to be realized? By living simple, well-regulated lives, and by casting all our anxiety upon God who careth for us.
Professor Blaikie commences a paper on "How to Get Rid of Trouble," by saying that once he had occasion to call on the chief of the constabulary force in one of our largest cities. "The conversation having turned on the arrangements for extinguishing fire, the chief constable entered with great alacrity into the subject, and after some verbal explanations, added, 'If you can spare half an hour, I will call out my men, and you shall see how we proceed.' I was taken aback at the idea of the firemen and engines being called out on a fine summer day to let a stranger see them at work; so I thanked him for his offer, but added that I could not think of giving him so much trouble. 'Trouble!' said he; 'what's that? That's a word I don't know.' 'You are a happy man,' was the reply, 'if you don't know the meaning of trouble.' 'No, indeed,' he said. 'I assure you I do not. The word is not in my dictionary.' As I was still incredulous, and wondering whether or not he had lost his senses, he rang the bell, and bade his clerk fetch him an English dictionary. Handing it to me, he said, 'Now, sir, please look and see whether you can find the word "trouble."' I turned to the proper place, and there, to be sure, where the word had been, I found it carefully erased by three lines of red ink. Of course I caught the idea at once. In a great work like that of the police in such a place, trouble was never to be thought of. No inroad that might be required on the ease, or the sleep, or the strength of any member of the force was ever to be grudged on the score that it was too much trouble. In the work of that office the thought of trouble was to be unknown. I felt that I had got a sermon from the chief of police, and a notable sermon, too. The three lines of red ink were as clear and telling as any three heads into which I had ever divided my discourse. It was a thrilling sermon, too—it set something vibrating within me."
This incident refers to trouble in the active sense; but even trouble in the sense of sorrow and disappointment may be to a large extent effaced from the family circle by certain red lines. Here is one of them. Do not make the trouble worse than it really is. Rather let us resolve to look at the bright side of things. If we had nothing more to think of, the proverbs that have been coined in the mint of hope ought to encourage us. "Nothing so bad but it might have been worse;" "'Tis always morning somewhere in the world;" "When things are at the worst they mend;" "The darkest hour of night is that which precedes the dawn." Let us try to form the habit of thinking how much there is to cheer us even when there may be much to depress; how often, on former occasions of trouble, we have been wonderfully helped; how foolish it is to anticipate evil before it comes.
"How dismal you look!" said a bucket to his companion, as they were going to the well. "Ah!" replied the other, "I was reflecting on the uselessness of our being filled, for let us go away ever so full, we always come back empty." "Dear me! how strange to look at it in that way!" said the other bucket. "Now I enjoy the thought that however empty we come, we always go away full. Only look at it in that light, and you will be as cheerful as I am."
Another red line which effaces trouble is patience. Speaking of the cheerful submission and trust of the London poor a well-known clergyman says: "Come with me; turn under this low doorway; climb these narrow creaking stairs; knock at the door. A pleasant voice bids you enter. You see a woman sixty-four years of age, her hands folded and contracted, her whole body crippled and curled together, as cholera cramped, and rheumatism fixed it twenty-eight years ago. For sixteen years she has not moved from her bed, nor looked out of the window; and has been in constant pain, while she cannot move a limb. Listen—she is thankful. For what? For the use of one thumb; with a two-pronged fork, fastened to a stick, she can turn over the leaves of an old-fashioned Bible, when placed within her reach. Hear her: 'I'm content to lie here as long as it shall please Him, and to go when He shall call me.'"
The third red line we would suggest is—Try to get good out of your troubles. Undoubtedly it is to be got, if the right way be taken to extract it. Scarcely any loss is without compensation. How often has the dignity of self-support and self-respect been gained when an external prop has been removed! How often have we been eventually glad that our wishes were not fulfilled! Plato tells us that "just penalties are the best gifts of the gods," and Goethe said he never had an affliction that he did not turn into a poem. The daylight must fade before we can behold the shining worlds around us, and the rigour of winter must be endured before our hearts can thrill with delight at the approach of Spring.
For the sake of household sunshine we should endeavour to keep in health. Lowness of tone, nervous irritability, the state of being ill-at-ease—these and many other forms of ill-health may, as a general rule, be avoided by those who endeavour to preserve their health as a sacred duty. If most people have but little health, it is because they transgress the laws of nature, alternately stimulating and depressing themselves. For our own sake and for the sake of others whom we trouble by irritability, we are bound to obey these laws—fresh air, exercise, moderate work, conquest of appetite.
"The deception," says Sydney Smith, "as practised upon human creatures, is curious and entertaining. My friend sups late; he eats some strong soup, then a lobster, then some tart, and he dilutes these esculent varieties with wine. The next day I call upon him. He is going to sell his house in London, and to retire into the country. He is alarmed for his eldest daughter's health. His expenses are hourly increasing, and nothing but a timely retreat can save him from ruin. All this is the lobster: and when over-excited nature has had time to manage this testaceous encumbrance, the daughter recovers, the finances are in good order, and every rural idea effectually excluded from the mind. In the same manner old friendships are destroyed by toasted cheese, and hard, salted meat has led to suicide. Unpleasant feelings of the body produce correspondent sensations in the mind, and a great scene of wretchedness is sketched out by a morsel of indigestible and misguided food. Of such infinite consequence to happiness is it to study the body!"
On the other hand, "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine." We should "laugh and be well," as enjoined by an old English versifier.
"To cure the mind's wrong bias, spleen,
Some recommend the bowling-green;
Some, hilly walks; all, exercise;
Fling but a stone, the giant dies;
Laugh and be well. Monkeys have been
Extreme good doctors for the spleen;
And kitten, if the humour hit,
Has harlequined away the fit."
It is the bounden duty of those who live together to cultivate the sunny side of life. To rejoice with those who rejoice is as much a duty as to weep with those that weep. Many have not that "great hereditary constitutional joy" which springs from a natural genius for happiness, but all may at least try to add to the stock of the household's cheerfulness. It is about the most useful contribution that any member of a family can make.
"As, although in the season of rainstorms and showers,
The tree may strike deeper its roots;
It needs the warm brightness of sunshiny hours,
To ripen the blossoms and fruits."
Sunlike pleasures never shine in idle homes. If a useful occupation or innocent hobby be not provided for the several members of a family, they are sure to spend their time in maliciously tormenting each other.
Those whose only care in life is to avoid care make a great mistake. They forget that even roses have thorns, and that pleasure is appreciated and enjoyed for its variety and contrast to pain. After all there is but one way of producing sunshine in our homes. We must first let the light into our own souls, and then like burning glasses we shall give it out to others, but especially to those of our own household. And whence comes the soul's calm sunshine and joy in right doing but from the Sun of Righteousness?
If there are many unhappy homes, many wretched families—more by far than is generally supposed—what is the cure for this? "Sweet reasonableness" as taught by Jesus Christ. If we would let Him into our houses to dwell with us, and form one of our family circle, He would turn our homes into little Edens.
"Something light as air—a look,
A word unkind or wrongly taken—
Oh, love, that tempests never shook,
A breath, a touch like this hath shaken,
And ruder words will soon rush in
To spread the breach that words begin."—Moore.
"Married life should be a sweet, harmonious song, and, like one of Mendelssohn's, 'without words.'"—Judy.
When the sunshine of domestic bliss has become more or less clouded by quarrels between a husband and wife, observers very often describe the state of affairs by the euphemism at the head of this chapter. "They had a few words"—this is the immediate cause of many a domestic catastrophe. A young man was sent to Socrates to learn oratory. On being introduced to the philosopher he talked so incessantly that Socrates asked for double fees. "Why charge me double?" said the young fellow. "Because," said Socrates, "I must teach you two sciences; the one how to hold your tongue, and the other how to speak." It is impossible for people to be happy in matrimony who will not learn the first of these sciences.
We do not know whether Simonides was or was not a married man, but we fancy he must have been, for he used to say that he never regretted holding his tongue, but very often was sorry for having spoken. "Seest thou a man that is hasty in his words? There is more hope of a fool than of him." Sober second thoughts suggest palliatives and allowances that temper prevents us from noticing. The simple act of self-denial in restraining the expression of unpleasant feelings or harsh thoughts is the foundation stone of a happy home. For nothing draws people so closely together as the constant experience of mutual pleasure, and nothing so quickly drives them asunder as the frequent endurance of pain caused by one another's presence.
"One doth not know
How much an ill word may empoison liking."
Sometimes the husband blames the wife and the wife the husband when neither of them is at fault. This always reminds us of Pat's mistake. Two Irishmen walking along the same street, but coming from opposite directions, approached, both smiling and apparently recognizing one another. As they came closer they discovered that it was a mutual mistake. Equal to the occasion one of them said, "Och, my friend, I see how it is. You thought it was me, and I thought it was you, and now it's naythur of us."
Burton tells of a woman who, hearing one of her "gossips" complain of her husband's impatience, told her an excellent remedy for it. She gave her a glass of water, which, when he brawled, she should hold still in her mouth. She did so two or three times with great success, and at length, seeing her neighbour, she thanked her for it, and asked to know the ingredients. She told her that it was "fair water," and nothing more, for it was not the water, but her silence which performed the cure.
There are people who are kind in their actions and yet brutal in their speech, and they forget that it is not every one who can bear, like Boswell, to be told he is a fool. A woman may think she is always right and her husband always wrong, but it does not make the wheels of domestic life run smoother to say this in plain English. A man may have a contempt for his wife's dearest brother, but to tell the wife or brother so is not conducive to harmony.
It has sometimes been remarked that the marriage of a deaf and dumb man to a blind woman would have obvious advantages. Each of the parties would acquire an opportunity to practise little pantomimic scenes from which ordinary married folks are debarred. When they quarrelled, for instance—the wife being unable to see, while the husband could not hear or speak—she could hurl at him broadside after broadside of steel-pointed invective; and the poor man could but stand there, study the motion of her lips, and fondly imagine she was telling him how sorry she was that anything should come between them. He, on the other hand, could sit down, shake his fists, and make hideous grimaces, she all the while thinking he was sitting with his face buried in his hands, and hot remorseful tears streaming from his eyes. Husbands and wives who are not deprived of the use of their faculties might take the hint and resolve not to use them too keenly on certain occasions. In a matrimonial quarrel they need not hear or see everything.
"If you your lips would keep from slips,
Five things observe with care:
Of whom you speak, to whom you speak
And how, and when, and where.
The "last word" is the most dangerous of infernal machines. Husband and wife should no more fight to get it than they would struggle for the possession of a lighted bomb-shell. What is the use of the last word? After getting it a husband might perhaps, as an American newspaper suggests, advertise to whistle for a wager against a locomotive; but in every other respect his victory would be useless and painful. It would be a Cadmean victory in which the victor would suffer as much as the vanquished. A farmer cut down a tree which stood so near the boundary line of his farm that it was doubtful whether it belonged to him or to his neighbour. The neighbour, however, claimed the tree, and prosecuted the man who cut it for damages. The case was sent from court to court. Time was wasted and temper lost; but the case was finally gained by the prosecutor. The last of the transaction was that the man who gained the cause went to the lawyer's office to execute a deed of his whole farm, which he had been compelled to sell to pay his costs! Then, houseless and homeless, he thrust his hands into his pockets, and triumphantly exclaimed, "I've beat him!" In the same way husband and wife may become bankrupt of heart-wealth by endeavouring to get the last word.
Men sometimes become fractious from pure monotony. When they are unable to find subjects for profitable conversation there arises a propensity to "nag" and find fault. In a Russian story, the title of which in English is "Buried Alive," two prisoners are talking in the night, and one relates: "I had got, somehow or other, in the way of beating her (his wife). Some days I would keep at it from morning till night. I did not know what to do with myself when I was not beating her. She used to sit crying, and I could not help feeling sorry for her, and so I beat her." Subsequently he murdered her. Are there not men above the class of wife-beaters who indulge in fault-finding, "nagging," and other forms of tongue-castigation? They have got into the habit. They do not know what to do with themselves when not so employed. The tears of their wives only irritate them.
Of course some wives are quite capable of giving as much as they get. It is said that at a recent fashionable wedding, after the departure of the happy pair, a dear little girl, whose papa and mamma were among the guests, asked, with a child's innocent inquisitiveness: "Why do they throw things at the pretty lady in the carriage?" "For luck, dear," replied one of the bridesmaids. "And why," again asked the child, "doesn't she throw them back?" "Oh," said the young lady, "that would be rude." "No it wouldn't," persisted the dear little thing to the delight of her doting parents who stood by: "ma does."
"As the climbing up a sandy way is to the feet of the aged, so is a wife full of words to a quiet man." She who "has a tongue of her own" has always more last words to say, and, if she ever does close her mouth, the question suggests itself whether she should not be arrested for carrying concealed weapons. On the tombs of such wives might be inscribed epitaphs like the following, which is to be found in a churchyard in Surrey—
"Here lies, returned to clay,
Miss Arabella Young,
Who on the first of May
Began to hold her tongue."
Poor Caudle, as a rule, thought discretion the better part of valour, and sought refuge in the arms of soothing slumber; but there are some men who do not allow their wives to have it all their own way without at least an occasional protest. "Do you pretend to have as good a judgment as I have?" said an enraged wife to her husband. "Well, no," he replied, deliberately; "our choice of partners for life shows that my judgment is not to be compared to yours." When they have "a few words," however, the woman usually has the best of it. "See here," said a fault-finding husband, "we must have things arranged in this house so that we shall know where everything is kept." "With all my heart," sweetly answered his wife, "and let us begin with your late hours, my love. I should much like to know where they are kept."
Such matrimonial word-battles may amuse outsiders as the skill of gladiators used to amuse, but the combatants make themselves very miserable. Far better to be incapable of making a repartee if we only use the power to wound the feelings of the one whom we have vowed to love. There is an art of putting things that should be studied by married people. How many quarrels would be avoided if we could always say with courtesy and tact any unpleasant thing that may have to be said! It is related of a good-humoured celebrity that when a man once stood before him and his friend at the theatre, completely shutting out all view of the stage, instead of asking him to sit down, or in any way giving offence, he simply said, "I beg your pardon, sir; but when you see or hear anything particularly interesting on the stage, will you please let us know, as we are entirely dependent on your kindness?" That was sufficient. With a smile and an apology that only the art of putting things could have extracted, the gentleman took his seat. There is a story of a separation which took place simply because a gracious announcement had been couched by a husband in ungracious terms. "My dear, here is a little present I have brought to make you good-tempered." "Sir," was the indignant reply, "do you dare to say that it is necessary to bribe me into being good-tempered? Why, I am always good-tempered; it is your violent temper, sir!" And so the quarrel went on to the bitter end.
It is a very difficult thing to find fault well. We all have to find fault at times, in reference to servants, children, husband, or wife; but in a great number of cases the operation loses half its effect, or has no effect at all, perhaps a downright bad effect, because of the way in which it is done. Above all things remember this caution, never to find fault when out of temper. Again, there is a time not to find fault, and in the right perception of when that time is lies no small part of the art. The reproof which has most sympathy in it will be most effectual. It understands and allows for infirmity. It was this sympathy that prompted Dr. Arnold to take such pains in studying the characters of his pupils, so that he might best adapt correction to each particular case.
The very worst time for a husband and wife to have "a few words" is dinner-time, because, if we have a good dinner, our attention should be bestowed on what we are eating. He who bores us at dinner robs us of pleasure and injures our health, a fact which the alderman realized when he exclaimed to a stupid interrogator, "With your confounded questions, sir, you've made me swallow a piece of green fat without tasting it." Many a poor wife has to swallow her dinner without tasting it because her considerate husband chooses this time to find fault with herself, the children, the servants, and with everything except himself. The beef is too much done, the vegetables too little, everything is cold. "I think you might look after something! Oh! that is no excuse," and so on, to the great disturbance of his own and his wife's digestion. God sends food, but the devil sends the few cross words that prevent it from doing us any good. We should have at least three laughs during dinner, and every one is bound to contribute a share of agreeable table-talk, good-humour, and cheerfulness.
"In politics," said Cavour, "nothing is so absurd as rancour." In the same way we may say that nothing is so absurd in matrimony as sullen silence. Reynolds in his "Life and Times" tells of a free-and-easy actor who passed three festive days at the seat of the Marquis and Marchioness of —— without any invitation, convinced (as proved to be the case) that, my lord and my lady not being on speaking terms, each would suppose the other had asked him. A soft answer turns away wrath, and when a wife or a husband is irritated there is nothing like letting a subject drop. Then silence is indeed golden. But the silence persisted in—as by the lady in the old comedy, who, in reply to her husband's "For heaven's sake, my dear, do tell me what you mean," obstinately keeps her lips closed—is an instrument of deadly torture. "A wise man by his words maketh himself beloved." To this might be added that on certain occasions a fool by his obstinate silence maketh himself hated.
"According to Milton, 'Eve kept silence in Eden to hear her husband talk,'" said a gentleman to a lady friend; and then added, in a melancholy tone, "Alas! there have been no Eves since." "Because," quickly retorted the lady, "there have been no husbands worth listening to." Certainly there are too few men who exert themselves to be as agreeable to their wives (their best friends), as they are to the comparative strangers or secret enemies whom they meet at clubs and other places of resort. And yet if it is true that "to be agreeable in our family circle is not only a positive duty but an absolute morality," then every husband and wife should say on their wedding day—
"To balls and routs for fame let others roam,
Be mine the happier lot to please at home."
In one of the letters of Robertson, of Brighton, he tells of a lady who related to him "the delight, the tears of gratitude which she had witnessed in a poor girl to whom, in passing, I gave a kind look on going out of church on Sunday. What a lesson! How cheaply happiness can be given! What opportunities we miss of doing an angel's work! I remember doing it, full of sad feelings, passing on, and thinking no more about it; and it gave an hour's sunshine to a human life, and lightened the load of life to a human heart for a time!" If even a look can do so much, who shall estimate the power of kind or unkind words in making married life happy or miserable? In the home circle more than anywhere else—
"Words are mighty, words are living:
Serpents with their venomous stings,
Or bright angels, crowding round us,
With heaven's light upon their wings:
Every word has its own spirit,
True or false that never dies;
Every word man's lips have uttered
Echoes in God's skies."
"When souls, that should agree to will the same,
To have one common object for their wishes,
Look different ways, regardless of each other,
Think what a train of wretchedness ensues!"
Said a husband to his angry wife: "Look at Carlo and Kitty asleep on the rug; I wish men lived half as agreeably with their wives." "Stop!" said the lady. "Tie them together, and see how they will agree!" If men and women when tied together sometimes agree very badly what is the reason? Because instead of pulling together each of them wishes to have his or her own way. But when they do pull together what greater thing is there for them than "to feel that they are joined for life, to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in the silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?"
What is meant by pulling together may be explained by referring to the custom of the "Dunmow flitch," which was founded by Juga, a noble lady, in A.D. IIII, and restored by Robert de Fitzwalter, in 1244. It was that any person from any part of England going to Dunmow in Essex, and humbly kneeling on two stones at the church door, may claim a gammon of bacon if he can swear that for twelve months and a day he has never had a household brawl or wished himself unmarried. Hence the phrase "He may fetch a flitch of bacon from Dunmow," i.e., He is so amiable and good-tempered that he will never quarrel with his wife. To eat Dunmow bacon is to live in conjugal amity. There were only eight claimants admitted to eat the flitch between the years 1244-1772, a number that seems to justify Prior's sarcastic couplet:
"Ah, madam, cease to be mistaken,
Few married fowl peck Dunmow bacon."
It is a great pity that "few married fowl peck Dunmow bacon," for those that do are so happy that they may be called birds of Paradise.
"A well-matched couple carry a joyful life between them, as the two spies carried the cluster of Eshcol. They multiply their joys by sharing them, and lessen their troubles by dividing them: this is fine arithmetic. The waggon of care rolls lightly along as they pull together, and when it drags a little heavily, or there's a hitch anywhere, they love each other all the more, and so lighten the labour." When there is wisdom in the husband there is generally gentleness in the wife, and between them the old wedding wish is worked out: "One year of joy, another of comfort, and all the rest of content."
When two persons without any spiritual affinity are bound together in irrevocable bondage, it is to their "unspeakable weariness and despair," and life becomes to them "a drooping and disconsolate household captivity, without refuge or redemption." Such unions are marriages only in name. They are a mere housing together.
However, this doctrine may easily be exaggerated, and certainly married people ought to be very slow in allowing themselves to think that it is impossible for them to hit it off or pull with the partners of their lives. Those who cherish unhealthy sentimentalism on this subject would do well to brace themselves up by reading a little of the robust common sense of Dr. Johnson. Talking one evening of Mrs. Careless, the doctor said: "If I had married her, it might have been as happy for me." Boswell: "Pray, sir, do you not suppose that there are fifty women in the world, with any one of whom a man may be as happy as with any one woman in particular?" Johnson: "Ay, sir, fifty thousand." Boswell: "Then, sir, you are not of opinion with some who imagine that certain men and certain women are made for each other; and that they cannot be happy if they miss their counterparts." Johnson: "To be sure not, sir. I believe marriages would in general be as happy, and often more so, if they were all made by the Lord Chancellor, upon a due consideration of the characters and circumstances, without the parties having any choice in the matter."
The following, too, is interesting, for we may gather from it how, in Johnson's opinion, the feat of living happily with any one of fifty thousand women could be accomplished. The question was started one evening whether people who differed on some essential point could live in friendship together. Johnson said they might. Goldsmith said they could not, as they had not the idem velle atque idem nolle—the same likings and the same aversions. Johnson: "Why, sir, you must shun the subject as to which you disagree. For instance, I can live very well with Burke; I love his knowledge, his genius, his diffusion, and affluence of conversation; but I would not talk to him of the Rockingham party." Goldsmith: "But, sir, when people live together who have something as to which they disagree, and which they want to shun, they will be in the situation mentioned in the story of Bluebeard, 'You may look into all the chambers but one.' But we should have the greatest inclination to look into that chamber, to talk over that subject." Johnson (with a loud voice): "Sir, I am not saying that you could live in friendship with a man from whom you differ as to some point: I am only saying that I could do it."
In matrimony, as in religion, in things essential there should be unity, in things indifferent diversity, in all things charity.
In matrimony, though it is the closest and dearest friendship, shades of character and the various qualities of mind and heart, never approximate to such a degree, as to preclude all possibility of misunderstanding. But the broad and firm principles upon which all honourable and enduring sympathy is founded, the love of truth, the reverence for right, the abhorrence of all that is base and unworthy, admit of no difference or misunderstanding; and where these exist in the relations of two people united for life, love, and happiness, as perfect as this imperfect existence affords, may be realized. But the rule is different in matters that are not essential. In reference to these married people should cultivate "the sympathy of difference." They should agree to differ each respecting the tastes and prejudices of the other.
At no time are husbands and wives seen to greater advantage than when yielding their own will in unimportant matters to the will of another, and we quite agree with a writer who makes the following remark: "Great actions are so often performed from little motives of vanity, self-complacency, and the like, that I am apt to think more highly of the person whom I observe checking a reply to a petulant speech, or even submitting to the judgment of another in stirring the fire, than of one who gives away thousands!"
In all things there should be charity. Dolly Winthrop in "Silas Marner" was patiently tolerant of her husband, "considering that men would be so," and viewing the stronger sex "in the light of animals whom it pleased Heaven to make troublesome like bulls or turkey cocks." This sensible woman knew that if at times her husband was troublesome he had his good qualities. On these she would accustom herself to dwell.
A Scotch minister, being one day engaged in visiting his flock, came to the door of a house where his gentle tapping could not be heard for the noise of contention within. After waiting a little he opened the door and walked in, saying, with an authoritative voice: "I should like to know who is the head of this house?" "Weel, sir," said the husband and father, "if ye sit doon a wee, we'll maybe be able to tell ye, for we're just tryin' to settle the point." Merely to settle this point some married people are continually engaging in a tug of war instead of pulling comfortably together. But what a mean contest! How much better it would be only to strive who should love the other most! To married people especially are these words of Marcus Aurelius applicable: "We are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act against one another, then, is contrary to nature."
That union is strength is forcibly, if not very elegantly, illustrated by Erskine's description of a lodging where he had passed the night. He said that the fleas were so numerous and so ferocious that if they had been but unanimous they would have pulled him out of bed. If husband and wife would be but unanimous they would be a match against every enemy to their felicity. On the other hand, how impossible it is for those who work against each other to live together with any advantage or comfort. We all remember the illustration of Æsop. A charcoal-burner carried on his trade in his own house. One day he met a friend, a fuller, and entreated him to come and live with him, saying that they should be far better neighbours, and that their housekeeping expenses would be lessened. The fuller replied, "The arrangement is impossible as far as I am concerned, for whatever I should whiten, you would immediately blacken again with your charcoal."
One secret of pulling together is not to interfere with what does not concern us. A man who can trust his wife should no more meddle with her home concerns than she should pester him with questions about his business. He will never be able to pull with her if he pokes over the weekly bills, insists on knowing how much each thing is per pound, and what he is going to have every day for dinner. It is indeed almost a sine quâ non of domestic felicity that paterfamilias should be absent from home at least six hours in the day. Jones asked his wife, "Why is a husband like dough?" He expected she would give it up, and he was going to tell her that it was because a woman needs him; but she said it was because he was hard to get off her hands.
Of course, like every other good rule, this one of non-intervention may be carried too far, as it was by the studious man who said, when a servant told him that his house was on fire, "Go to your mistress, you know I have no charge of household matters." No doubt occasions will arise when a husband will be only too glad to take counsel with his wife in business cares; while she may have to remember all her life long, with gratitude and love, some season of sickness or affliction, when he filled his own place and hers too, ashamed of no womanish task, and neither irritated nor humiliated by ever such trivial household cares.
"Parents and children seldom act in concert, each child endeavours to appropriate the esteem or fondness of the parents, and the parents, with yet less temptation, betray each other to their children; thus some place their confidence in the father, and some in the mother, and by degrees the house is filled with artifices and feuds." These words point to a danger to be guarded against by married people who desire to pull together. It is sad when a child is not loved equally by both its parents. In this case, however innocent and blessed the little one may be, it is liable to become the disturber of parental peace.
Perhaps the way Carlyle and his wife pulled together is not so very uncommon. His mother used to say of him that he was "gey ill to live with," and Miss Welsh whom he married had a fiery temper. When provoked she "was as hard as a flint, with possibilities of dangerous sparks of fire." The pair seem to have tormented each other, but not half as much as each tormented him and herself. They were too like each other, suffering in the same way from nerves disordered, digestion impaired, excessive self-consciousness, and the absence of children to take their thoughts away from each other. They were, in the fullest sense of the word, everything to each other—both for good and evil, sole comforters, chief tormentors. The proverb "Ill to hae but waur to want" was true of the Carlyles as of many another couple.
Sir David Baird and some other English officers, being captured by Tippo Saib, were confined for some time in one of the dungeons of his palace at Bangalore. When Sir David's mother heard the news in Scotland, referring to the method in which prisoners were chained together and to her son's well-known irascible temper, she exclaimed: "God pity the lad that's tied to our Davie." How much more to be pitied is he or she whom matrimony has tied for life to a person with a bad temper!
Over-particularity in trifles causes a great deal of domestic discomfort. The husband or wife who, to use a common phrase, wishes a thing to be "just so," and not otherwise, is uncomfortable to pull with. For any person to be thoroughly amiable and livable with, there should be a little touch of untidiness and unpreciseness, and indifference to small things. A little spice—not too much—of the Irishman's spirit who said, "If you can't take things asy, take them as asy as you can."
There is no more beautiful quality than that ideality which conceives and longs after perfection; but if too exclusively cultivated it may drag down rather than elevate its possessor. The faculty which is ever conceiving and desiring something better and more perfect must be modified in its action by good sense, patience, and conscience, otherwise it induces a morbid, discontented spirit, which courses through the veins of individual and family life like a subtle poison.
Exactingsness is untrained ideality, and much domestic misery is caused by it. A little bit of conscience makes the exacting person sour. He fusses, fumes, finds fault, and scolds because everything is not perfect in an imperfect world. Much more happy and good is he whose conceptions and desire of excellence are equally strong, but in whom there is a greater amount of discriminating common-sense.
Most people can see what is faulty in themselves and their surroundings; but while the dreamer frets and wears himself out over the unattainable, the happy, practical man is satisfied with what can be attained. There was much wisdom in the answer given by the principal of a large public institution when complimented on his habitual cheerfulness amid a diversity of cares: "I've made up my mind," he said, "to be satisfied when things are done half as well as I would have them."
Ideality often becomes an insidious mental and moral disease, acting all the more subtlely from its alliance with what is noblest in us.
The virtue of conscientiousness may turn into the vice of censoriousness if misapplied. It was the constant prayer of the great and good Bishop Butler that he might be saved from what he called "scrupulosity." Dr. Johnson used to admire this wise sentence in Thomas à Kempis: "Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be." Searching for domestic happiness would not be as unsuccessful as it is with some people if they were not continually finding fault.
Jeremy Taylor impresses this fact by one of his quaint illustrations: "The stags in the Greek epigram, whose knees were clogged with frozen snow upon the mountains, came down to the brooks of the valleys, hoping to thaw their joints with the waters of the stream; but there the frost overtook them, and bound them fast in ice, till the young herdsmen took them in their stranger snare. It is the unhappy chance of many men finding many inconveniences upon the mountains of single life, they descend into the valleys of marriage to refresh their troubles, and there they enter into fetters, and are bound to sorrow by the cords of a man's or woman's peevishness."
The Psalmist says that "God maketh men to be of one mind in a house." Let husband and wife live near Him, and He will enable them to avoid domestic strife which Cowper declares to be the "sorest ill of human life."