"I think for a woman to fail to make and keep a happy home, is to be a 'failure' in a truer sense than to have failed to catch a husband."—Frances Power Cobbe.
"We think caged birds sing, when indeed they cry."—Vittoria Corombona.
When Mr. Wilberforce was a candidate for Hull, his sister, an amiable and witty young lady, offered a new dress to each of the wives of those freemen who voted for her brother. When saluted with "Miss Wilberforce for ever!" she pleasantly observed, "I thank you, gentlemen, but I cannot agree with you, for really I do not wish to be Miss Wilberforce for ever."
We do not blame Miss Wilberforce or any other young lady for not wishing to be a "Miss" for ever; but we desire to point out in this chapter that all is not done when the husband is gained.
"Even in the happiest choice whom fav'ring Heaven
Has equal love and easy fortune given;
Think not, the husband gained, that all is done,
The prize of happiness must still be won;
And oft the careless find it to their cost;
The lover in the husband may be lost;
The graces might alone his heart allure;
They and the virtues meeting must secure."
According to Dean Swift, "the reason why so few marriages are happy is because young women spend their time in making nets, not in making cages." Certainly a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, and girls are quite justified in trying in all ways, consistent with modesty and self-respect, to net husbands. Still, she is the really fine woman who can not merely net the affections of a husband during the honeymoon, but who can cage and keep them throughout a long married life. Only the other day, a man told me that after forty years of married life, he loved his wife almost better than the day they were married. We are not told that Alexander the Great, after conquering the world, kept his conquest very long, but this wife kept her conquest forty years. Woman in her time has been called upon to endure a great deal of definition. She had been described as, "A good idea—spoiled!" This may be true of one who can only make nets, but it certainly is not true of a cage-maker. Always do—
"Her air, her smile, her motions, tell
Of womanly completeness;
A music as of household songs
Is in her voice of sweetness.
Flowers spring to blossom where she walks
The careful ways of duty;
The hard stiff lines of life with her
Are flowing curves of beauty."
Men are often as easily caught as birds, but as difficult to keep. If the wife cannot make her home bright and happy, so that it shall be the cleanest, sweetest, cheerfullest place that her husband can find refuge in—a retreat from the toils and troubles of the outer world—then God help the poor man, for he is virtually homeless!
In the home more than anywhere else order is Heaven's first law. It is the duty of a wife to sweetly order her cage so that it may be clean, neat, and free from muddle. Method is the oil that makes the wheels of the domestic machine run easily. The mistress of a home who desires order, and the tranquillity that comes of order, must insist on the application of method to every branch and department of the household work. She must rise and breakfast early and give her orders early. Doing much before twelve o'clock gives her a command of the day.
A friend of Robert Hall, the famous preacher, once asked him regarding a lady of their acquaintance, "Will she make a good wife for me?" "Well," replied Hall, "I can hardly say—I never lived with her!" This is the real test of happiness in married life. It is one thing to see ladies on "dress" occasions and when every effort is being made to please them; it is quite another thing to see them amidst the varied and often conflicting circumstances of household life. Men may talk in raptures of youth and beauty, wit and sprightliness; but after seven years of union, not one of them is to be compared to good family management which is seen at every meal, and felt every hour in the husband's purse. In the "Records of Later Life," Fanny Kemble (Mrs. Butler), shortly after she had begun housekeeping with a staff of six servants, writes from America to a friend, "I have been reproaching myself, and reproving others, and heartily regretting that instead of Italian and music, I had not learned a little domestic economy, and how much bread, butter, flour, eggs, milk, sugar, and meat ought to be consumed per week by a family of eight persons." There is no reason why she should not have learned all this, and Italian and music as well.
Gradually it has come to be seen that practical cookery, which might be classed under the head of chemistry, is an excellent intellectual training, as it teaches the application in daily life of knowledge derived from a variety of branches of study. From this point of view even sweet girl-graduates may take pride in being good cooks, while as regards women of the working classes hardly anything drives their husbands to drink so much as bad cookery and irregular meals.
Leigh Hunt used to say that "the most fascinating women are those that can most enrich the every-day moments of existence." If we are to believe Mrs. Carlyle, who lived next door to the Hunts at Chelsea, Mrs. Hunt did not do much in the way of domestic economy to "enrich the every-day moments of existence." "I told Mrs. Hunt, one day, I had been very busy painting." "What?" she asked, "is it a portrait?" "Oh! no," I told her; "something of more importance—a large wardrobe." She could not imagine, she said, "how I could have patience for such things." And so, having no patience for them herself, what is the result? She is every other day reduced to borrow my tumblers, my tea-cups; even a cupful of porridge, a few spoonfuls of tea, are begged of me, because "Missus has got company, and happens to be out of the article;' in plain anadorned English, because 'missus' is the most wretched of managers, and is often at the point of having not a copper in her purse. To see how they live and waste here, it is a wonder the whole city does not 'bankrape, and go out o' sicht';—flinging platefuls of what they are pleased to denominate 'crusts' (that is, what I consider all the best of the bread) into the ashpits.' I often say, with honest self-congratulation, 'In Scotland we have no such thing as "crusts."' On the whole, though the English ladies seem to have their wits more at their finger-ends, and have a great advantage over me in that respect, I never cease to be glad that I was born on the other side of the Tweed, and that those who are nearest and dearest to me are Scotch.... Mrs. Hunt I shall soon be quite terminated with, I foresee. She torments my life out with borrowing. She actually borrowed one of the brass fenders the other day, and I had difficulty in getting it out of her hands; irons, glasses, tea-cups, silver spoons are in constant requisition; and when one sends for them the whole number can never be found. Is it not a shame to manage so, with eight guineas a week to keep house on! It makes me very indignant to see all the waste that goes on around me, when I am needing so much care and calculation to make ends meet."
When Carlyle was working hard to support himself and his wife by literature at the lonely farmhouse which was their home, Mrs. Carlyle did all she could to mitigate by good cookery the miseries which dyspepsia inflicted upon him. She thus writes of her culinary trials: "The bread, above all, brought from Dumfries, 'soured on his stomach' (Oh Heaven!), and it was plainly my duty as a Christian wife to bake at home; so I sent for Cobbett's 'Cottage Economy,' and fell to work at a loaf of bread. But knowing nothing about the process of fermentation or the heat of ovens, it came to pass that my loaf got put into the oven at the time that myself ought to have been put into bed; and I remained the only person not asleep in a house in the middle of a desert. One o'clock struck, and then two, and then three; and still I was sitting there in an immense solitude, my whole body aching with weariness, my heart aching with a sense of forlornness and degradation. That I, who had been so petted at home, whose comfort had been studied by everybody in the house, who had never been required to do anything but cultivate my mind, should have to pass all those hours of the night in watching a loaf of bread—which mightn't turn out bread after all! Such thoughts maddened me, till I laid down my head on the table and sobbed aloud. It was then that somehow the idea of Benvenuto Cellini sitting up all night watching his Perseus in the furnace came into my head, and suddenly I asked myself: 'After all, in the sight of the Upper Powers, what is the mighty difference between a statue of Perseus and a loaf of bread, so that each be the thing one's hand has found to do? The man's determined will, his energy, his patience, his resource, were the really admirable things of which his statue of Perseus was the mere chance expression. If he had been a woman living at Craigenputtoch, with a dyspeptic husband, sixteen miles from a baker, and he a bad one, all these same qualities would have come out more fitly in a good loaf of bread.' I cannot express what consolation this germ of an idea spread over my uncongenial life during the years we lived at that savage place, where my two immediate predecessors had gone mad, and the third had taken to drink."
Though the life of that tragic muse Mrs. Siddons was girded about with observance and worship from the highest in the land, though her mind and imagination were always employed in realizing the most glorious creations of the most glorious poets, Mrs. Siddons in her home was at once the simplest and the tenderest of women. She did a great deal of the household work herself, and her grand friends, when they called, would be met by her with a flat-iron in her hand, or would find her seated studying a new part, while, at the same time, she rocked the cradle of her latest born, and knitted her husband's stockings. When she went to the theatre she was generally accompanied by one or more of her children, and the little things would cling about her, holding her hand or her dress, as she stood in the side scenes. The fine ladies who petted her could not put one grain of their fine-ladyism into her. To the end of her life she remained a proof of the not-generally-believed fact that an artist can be, at the same time, a most purely domestic woman. The same too may be said of a mathematician, for the greatest woman-mathematician of any age, Mary Somerville, was renowned for her good housekeeping.
An American newspaper lately addressed the following wise words to young women: "Learn to keep house. If you would be a level-headed woman; if you would have right instincts and profound views, and that most subtle, graceful, and irresistible of all things, womanly charm; if you would make your pen, your music, your accomplishments tell, and would give them body, character, and life; if you would be a woman of genuine power, and queen o'er all the earth, learn to keep house thoroughly and practically. You see the world all awry, and are consumed with a desire to set it right. Must you go on a mission to the heathen? Very well, but learn to keep house first. Begin reform, where all true reform must begin, at the centre and work outwards; at the foundation and work upwards. What is the basis and centre of all earthly life? It is the family, the home; these relations dictate and control all others. There is nothing from which this distracted world is suffering so much to-day, as for want of thorough housekeeping and homemaking."
But a cage-making wife is much more than a good cook and housekeeper. Indeed it is possible for a wife to be too careful and cumbered about these things. When such is the case she becomes miserable and grumbles at a little dust or disorder which the ordinary mortal does not see, just as a fine musician is pained and made miserable at a slight discord that is not noticed by less-trained ears. Probably her husband wishes his house were less perfectly kept, but more peaceful. A woman should know when to change her rôle of housewife for that of the loving friend and companion of her husband. She should be able and willing to intelligently discuss with him the particular political or social problem that is to him of vital interest. We will all agree with Dr. Johnson that a man of sense and education should seek a suitable companion in a wife. "It was," he said, "a miserable thing when the conversation could only be such as, whether the mutton should be boiled or roast, and probably a dispute about that." A good and loyal wife takes upon her a share of everything that concerns and interests her husband. Whatever may be his work or even recreation, she endeavours to learn enough about it to be able to listen to him with interest if he speaks to her of it, and to give him a sensible opinion if he asks for it. In every matter she is helpful.
Women's lives are often very dull; but it would help to make them otherwise if wives would sometimes think over, during the hours when parted from their husbands, a few little winning ways as surprises for them on their return, either in the way of conversation, or of some small change of dress, or any way their ingenuity would have suggested in courting days. How little the lives of men and women would be dull, if they thought of and acted towards each other after marriage as they did before it!
Certainly, it does a wife good to go out of her cage occasionally for amusement, although her deepest, truest happiness may be found at home. She, quite as much as her husband, requires change and recreation, but while this is true she must never forget that a life of pleasure is a life of pain, and that if much of her time is spent in visiting and company, anarchy and confusion at home must be the consequence. "Never seek for amusement," says Mr. Ruskin, "but be always ready to be amused. The least thing has play in it—the slightest word wit, when your hands are busy and your heart is free. But if you make the aim of your life amusement, the day will come when all the agonies of a pantomime will not bring you an honest laugh."
Nothing renders a woman so agreeable to her husband as good humour. It possesses the powers ascribed to magic and imparts beauty to the plainest features. On the other hand, the bright, sparkling girl, who turns, after marriage, in her hours of privacy with her husband, into the dull, silent, or grumbling wife has no one to thank but herself if he is often absent from his home.
Men hate nagging, and, indeed, husband-nagging is almost as cruel as wife-beating. There are women whose perpetual contentiousness is a moral reproduction of an Oriental torture, that drops water on you every ten seconds. The butler of a certain Scottish laird, who had been in the family a number of years, at last resigned his situation because his lordship's wife was always scolding him. "Oh!" exclaimed his master, "if that be all, ye've very little to complain of." "Perhaps so," replied the butler; "but I have decided in my own mind to put up with it no longer." "Go, then," said his lordship; "and be thankful for the rest of your life that ye're not married to her."
The methods which women adopt in managing husbands vary with the characters of the individuals to be guided. In illustration of this here is a short story. Two women, Mrs. A. and Mrs. B., were talking together one day with some friends over a cup of tea, when the subject of the management of husbands came up. Each of these two wives boasted that she could make her husband do exactly what she liked. A spinster who was present, Miss C, denied the truth of this statement, and this led to high words, in the course of which it was agreed that each wife should prove her power by making her husband drive her on a particular afternoon in a hired carriage to an appointed place, which we will call Edmonton. The test was considered a good one, because the two husbands were individuals inclined to economy, who in the ordinary course of events would never think of hiring a carriage or driving anywhere, excepting in a 'bus to the City. Mrs. A. was a strong-minded, determined woman, and Mr. A. was meek and gentle; no one doubted, therefore, that Mrs. A. could get what she wanted. But Mr. B. was an argumentative, contradictory, wilful, and pugnacious individual, while Mrs. B. was sweet and good. It was expected that Mrs. B. would have to own herself defeated. However, the day arrived and the hour, the unbelieving spinster repaired to the spot, and up drove the two husbands with their wives sitting in state by their sides. "How did you manage it?" said Miss C. "Oh," said Mrs. A., "I simply said to my husband, 'Mr. A., I wish you to hire a carriage and drive me to Edmonton.' He said, 'Very well, my dear, but I——,' and here I am." "And how did you manage it, Mrs. B.?" Mrs. B. was unwilling to confess, but at length she was induced to do so. "I said to my husband, 'I think Mr. and Mrs. A. are very extravagant: they are going to hire a carriage and pair to-morrow and drive to Edmonton.' 'Why should they not do so if they like it?' said Mr. B. 'Oh, no reason at all, my dear, if you think it right, and if they can afford it; but we could not do anything of that kind, of course. Besides, I fancy Mr. A. is more accustomed to driving than you are.' 'A. is not at all more accustomed to it than I am,' said Mr. B., 'and I can afford it quite as well as he. Indeed, I will prove that I can and will, for I will hire a carriage and drive there at the same time.' 'Very well, my dear, if you think so; but I should not like to go with you, I should feel so ashamed.' 'Then I wish you to go with me, Mrs. B.; I insist upon your accompanying me.' So," said quiet little Mrs. B., "that is the way I manage Mr. B."
Neither of these women is to be congratulated on her method of management. Each despised her husband, and what sort of basis is scorn for happiness in married life? If a man's own wife does not believe in him, and look up to him, and admire him, and like him better than anyone else, poor man, who else will? If he is not king at home, where is he king?
Once upon a time, according to an old heathen legend, the gods and goddesses were assembled together, and were talking over matters celestial, when one of the company, who was of an inquiring mind, said, "What are the people who live on the earth like?" No one knew. One or two guesses were made, but every one knew that they were only guesses. At last an enterprising little goddess suggested that a special messenger should be sent to visit the earth, to make inquiries, and to bring back information concerning the inhabitants thereof. Off the messenger went. On his return, the gods and goddesses once more assembled, and every one was very anxious to hear the result of this mission. "Well," said Jove, who constituted himself speaker on the occasion, "what have you learnt? What are the people of the earth like?" "They are very curious people," said the traveller. "They have no character of their own, but they become what others think them. If you think them cruel, they act cruelly; if you think them true, they may be relied on; if you think them false, they lie and steal; if you believe them to be kind, they are amiability itself."
May not the secret of how to manage a husband be found in this small fable? A woman has power over her husband (that is, legitimate and reasonable power, not power to make him hire a carriage, but power to make him kind, true, and persevering) in proportion to her belief in him. She is never so helpless with regard to him as when she has lost faith in him herself.
Milton tells us that a good wife is "heaven's last, best gift to man;" but what constitutes a good wife? Purity of thought and feeling, a generous cheerful temper, a disposition ready to forgive, patience, a high sense of duty, a cultivated mind, and a natural grace of manner. She should be able to govern her household with gentle resolution, and to take an intelligent interest in her husband's pursuits. She should have a clear understanding, and "all the firmness that does not exclude delicacy," and "all the softness that does not imply weakness." "Her beauty, like the rose it resembleth, shall retain its sweetness when its bloom is withered. Her hand seeketh employment; her foot delighteth not in gadding about. She is clothed with neatness; she is fed with temperance. On her tongue dwelleth music; the sweetness of honey floweth from her lips. Her eye speaketh softness and love; but discretion, with a sceptre, sitteth on her brow. She presideth in the house, and there is peace; she commandeth with judgment, and is obeyed. She ariseth in the morning, she considers her affairs, and appointeth to every one their proper business. The prudence of her management is an honour to her husband; and he heareth her praise with a secret delight. Happy is the man that hath made her his wife; happy is the child that calleth her mother."
The married man must have been blessed with a cage-making wife like this who defined woman as "An essay on goodness and grace, in one volume, elegantly bound." Although it may seem a little expensive, every man should have a copy.
"A good wife is the gift of a good God, and the workmanship of a good husband."—Proverb.
"My dear sir, mind your studies, mind your business, make your lady happy, and be a good Christian."—Dr. Johnson's advice to Boswell.
A highland horse dealer, who lately effected a sale, was offered a bottle of porter to confess the animal's failings. The bottle was drunk, and he then said the horse had but two faults. When turned loose in the field he was "bad to catch," and he was "of no use when caught." Many a poor woman might say the same of her husband. She had to make many nets, for he was "bad to catch," and when caught—well, he forgot that husbands have duties as well as wives. Some men can neither do without wives nor with them; they are wretched alone, in what is called single blessedness, and they make their homes miserable when they get married; they are like the dog, which could not bear to be loose, and howled when it was tied up.
There are men with whom all the pleasure of love exists in its pursuit, and not in its possession. When a woman marries one of this class, he seems almost to despise her from that day. Having got her into his power he begins to bully her.
If it be true that there are more people married than keep good houses, husbands are quite as much to blame as wives. The proverb tells us that good wives and good plantations are made by good husbands. In the last chapter we ventured to suggest that women should make cages as well as nets; but all their efforts will be in vain if they have ill-birds who foul their own nests. To complete the subject, therefore, something must be said about the behaviour of the male bird when caught and caged.
First of all he should sing and not cry. How many women are there who suffer from the want of a kindly love, a sweet appreciation of their goodness and their self-sacrifice! How often will wives do tender and loving offices, adorn the home with flowers, making it as neat as the nest of a bird; dress their persons with elegance, and their faces with smiles, and find as a reward for this the stolid indifference of the block or the stupid insensibility of the lower animal! "She was a woman," wrote one who knew her sex well; "a woman down to the very tips of her finger-nails, and what she wanted was praise from the lips that she loved. Do you ask what that meant? Did she want gold, or dress, or power? No; all she wanted was that which will buy us all, and which so few of us ever get—in a word, it was Love."
Priscilla Lammeter, in "Silas Marner," well understood the selfish way many husbands fall into of relieving their feelings: "There's nothing kills a man so soon as having nobody to find fault with but himself. It's a deal the best way o' being master to let somebody else do the ordering, and keep the blaming in your own hands. It 'ud save many a man a stroke I believe."
"If he would only be satisfied!" Mrs. Carlyle used sometimes to complain of Carlyle, "but I have had to learn that when he does not find fault he is pleased, and that has to content me." On one occasion when Carlyle was away from home Mrs. Carlyle described her charwoman sort of work to get all in perfect order for her husband's arrival; and when all was complete—his dinner ready, his arm-chair in its usual attitude, his pipe and tobacco prepared, all looking as comfortable as possible—Mrs. C. sat down at last to rest, and to expect him with a quiet mind. He arrived; and "after he had just greeted me, what do you think he did? He walked to the window and shook it, and asked 'Where's the wedge of the window?' and until we had found that blessed wedge nothing would content him. He said the window would rattle and spoil all." When a great and good man gives such inordinate prominence to trivial worries, how intolerable to live with must be the baser sort, who scarcely know the meaning of self-control!
Some men may deserve rewards for distinguished service in action; but they certainly do not for distinguished service in passion or suffering. In this respect they are far less brave than women.
The fault of many husbands is not the absence of love, but their failure to express it in their daily lives, and the self-absorption which prevents them from knowing that their wives want something more than they give them. They do not pay that attention to little things on which so much of a woman's happiness depends.
"Instead of love being the occasion of all the misery of this world (as is sung by fantastic bards), the misery of this world is occasioned by there not being love enough." Certain it is, that as time goes on married life is not usually found to want less love, but more; not less expression of love, but more. Caroline Perthes, writing to her husband, is not content he should love her, but wishes the phlegmatic German would sometimes tell her so.
Husbands would be more considerate and less exacting if they realized the fact that a wife's work is never done. I have heard more than one lady remark that the greatest pleasure of hotel life, and of a visit to one's friends, is to be able to sit down to dinner without a knowledge of what is coming in the various courses.
The wife whose sympathy is always ready for her husband's out-of-door difficulties naturally expects that he should at least try to understand her housekeeping troubles. How many they are is known to every one who has "run" a house for even a short time. A woman may have much theoretical knowledge, but this will not prevent unlooked-for obstacles from arising. Annoyances caused by human frailty and the working of natural agents beset every practical housekeeper.
It is the unexpected that constantly happens, and the daily girding up to meet the emergencies of the hour is the task of every wife who seeks to make her home a comfortable, habitable abode. It is work—real, earnest work, quite as hard in its way as the husband's.
Husbands should know the value and the difficulty of the work of their wives, and should never forget that a little help is worth a great deal of fault-finding.
The husband's affection must never be merged in an overweening conceit of his authority. His rule must be the rule of reason and kindness, not of severity and caprice. He is the houseband and should bind all together like a corner-stone, but not crush everything like a mill-stone. Jeremy Taylor says: "The dominion of a man over his wife is no other than as the soul rules the body; for which it takes mighty care, and uses it with a delicate tenderness, and cares for it in all contingencies, and watches to keep it from all evils, and studies to make for it fair provisions, and very often is led by its inclinations and desires, and does never contradict its appetites but when they are evil, and then also not without some trouble and sorrow; and its government comes only to this, it furnishes the body with light and understanding; and the body furnishes the soul with hands and feet; the soul governs, because the body cannot else be happy; but the government is no other than provision, as a nurse governs a child, when she causes him to eat, and to be warm, and dry, and quiet."
It sometimes happens that she who ought to have most influence on her husband's mind has least. A man will frequently take the advice of a stranger who cares not for him, in preference to the cordial and sensible opinion of his own wife. Consideration of the domestic evils such a line of conduct is calculated to produce ought to prevent its adoption. Besides, there is in woman an intuitive quickness, a penetration, and a foresight, that make her advice very valuable. "If I was making up a plan of consequence," said Lord Bolingbroke, "I should like first to consult with a sensible woman." Many a man has been ruined by professed friends, because when his wife, with a woman's quick detection of character, saw through them and urged him to give them up, he would not do so. And if a wife is the partner of her husband's cares surely she ought also to be the companion of his pleasures. There are selfish husbands who go about amusing themselves; but in reference to their wives they seem to be of the same opinion as the ancient philosopher, who only approved of women leaving home three times in their lives—to be baptized, married, and buried! Does it never occur to such Egyptian taskmasters that all work and no play is quite as bad for women as for men, and that the wife who makes her cage comfortable should occasionally be offered and even urged to take a little amusement? I know of one wife who struck under such treatment. Whenever her husband spent his money and time too freely away from home, she used to take her child and go for a little excursion, which of course cost money. If he gave more "drinks" than he could afford to himself and to his club-companions, she used to frighten him into good behaviour by ordering a bottle of champagne for herself. Giving in this way a Roland for every Oliver, this really good wife soon brought her husband to see that his selfishness was a losing game.
Cobbett protests against a husband getting to like his club, or indeed any house, better than his own. When absent from necessity, there is no wound given to the heart of the wife; she concludes that her husband would be with her if he could, and that satisfies. Yet in these cases her feelings ought to be consulted as much as possible; she ought to be apprised of the probable duration of the absence, and of the time of return.
And what Cobbett preached upon this text he himself practised. He and a friend called Finnerty were dining with a mutual friend. At eleven o'clock Cobbett said to the host, "We must go; my wife will be frightened." "You do not mean to go home to-night," was the reply. "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.'"
We ourselves heard a wife saying to her husband only the other day, "I would rather you had done that than given me ten pounds." What had he done? Only put himself out a little to return home at the exact hour he had appointed to be with her. That the little attention gratified her so much will not seem strange to any one who has observed the power of little things in imparting either pleasure or pain.
A kind husband, when he goes from home, generally brings back some little present to his wife. Attentions like this keep fresh that element of romance which should never be entirely absent from married life. They remind the now staid, but still impressible matron, of the days of her maiden power, when a cold look from her brought winter into the room, and when the faintest wish would have sent a certain young gentleman on a walk of a dozen miles for the first violets. Yes, now and then give your wife a present—a real present, which, without involving undue expense, is good enough to compel a certain sacrifice, and suitable enough to make her cheek flush with delight at seeing that just as the bride was dearer than the sweetheart, the wife is yet dearer than the bride. There is quite as much human nature in a wife as in a husband (men forget this), and a little tender petting does her a great deal of good, and may even be better than presents.
What a model husband and father Macaulay would have been if he had married! His sister, Lady Trevelyan, says, that "those who did not know him at home, never knew him in his most brilliant, witty, and fertile vein." He was life and sunshine to young and old in the sombre house in Great Ormond Street, where the forlorn old father, like a blighted oak, lingered on in leafless decay, reading one long sermon to his family on Sunday afternoons, and another long sermon on Sunday evenings—"where Sunday walking for walking's sake was never allowed, and even going to a distant church was discouraged." Through this Puritanic gloom Macaulay shot like a sunbeam, and turned it into a fairy scene of innocent laughter and mirth. Against Macaulay, the author, severe things may be said; but as to his conduct in his own home—as a son, as a brother, and an uncle—it is only the barest justice to say that he appears to have touched the furthest verge of human virtue, sweetness, and generosity. His thinking was often, if not generally, pitched in what we must call a low key, but his action might put the very saints to shame. He reversed a practice too common among men of genius, who are often careful to display all their shining and attractive qualities to the outside world, and keep for home consumption their meanness, selfishness, and ill-temper. Macaulay struck no heroic attitude of benevolence, magnanimity, and aspiration before the world—rather the opposite; but in the circle of his home affections he practised those virtues without letting his right hand know what was done by his left.
Writing to his oldest and dearest friend in the first days of her overwhelming grief, Her Majesty the Queen described the Prince Consort as having been to her "husband, father, lover, master, friend, adviser, and guide." There could scarcely be a better description of what a husband ought to be.
"Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense,
Lie in three words—health, peace, and competence.
But Health consists with temperance alone,
And Peace, O Virtue, peace is all thy own."—Pope.
"Better to hunt in fields for health unbought,
Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught."—Dryden.
An eminent physician gave four rules for the preservation of health. When he died, his books were sold; one, which was said to contain very valuable precepts of health, but which the bidders were not permitted to open, sold at a high price. When the purchaser got it home he hastily proceeded to examine it, and was much disappointed at finding that it contained nothing more than four simple rules. He thought he had thrown his money away. But on further consideration he was induced to put the rules in practice; by doing so he was restored to a state of health to which he had long been a stranger. He often spoke of the old physician's book as the cheapest and most valuable purchase he ever made in his life. The rules were these: Keep the head cool; Keep the feet warm; Take a light supper; Rise early.
The old word for "holy" in the German language also means "healthy," and, in our own, "hale," "whole," and "holy" are from the same root. Carlyle says that "you could not get any better definition of what 'holy' really is than 'healthy—completely healthy.'" Mens sana in corpore sano. There is no kind of achievement you could make in the world that is equal to perfect health. What are nuggets and millions? The French financier said, "Alas! why is there no sleep to be sold?" Sleep was not in the market at any quotation.
What boots it to have attained wealth, if the wealth is accompanied by ceaseless ailments? What is the worth of distinction, if it has brought hypochondria with it? Surely no one needs telling that a good digestion, a bounding pulse, and high spirits, are elements of happiness which no external advantages can out-balance. Chronic bodily disorder casts a gloom over the brightest prospects; while the vivacity of strong health gilds even misfortune. Health is not merely freedom from bodily pain; it is the capability of receiving pleasure from all surrounding things, and from the employment of all our faculties. It need scarcely be said that without this capability even marriage cannot make us happy. Indeed, without a fair share of health to start with people are not justified in taking upon themselves the responsibilities of matrimony, and running the risk of introducing into the world weak children that may be said to be damned rather than born into it.
It has been remarked that the first requisite to success in life is to be a good animal. Will it seem shockingly unpoetical to suggest that this is also a very important element of success in marriage? Certainly beauty has great power in retaining as well as in gaining affection, and health is a condition of beauty. A clear complexion and laughing eyes, a supple and rounded form, and a face unmarked by wrinkles of pain or peevishness, are the results of vigour of constitution.
Overflowing health produces good humour, and we all know how important that is to matrimonial felicity. I once knew an old lady who used to say that it was a duty to sometimes take medicine for the sake of one's friends. She was thinking of the effect of dyspepsia, congested liver, and other forms of ill-health upon our tempers. The chief misery of dyspepsia is that it is not merely pain, but pain which affects the intellect and feelings alike; in Carlyle's vivid words: "Every window of your feeling, even of your intellect, as it were, begrimed and mud-bespattered, so that no pure ray can enter; a whole drug-shop in your inwards; the foredone soul drowning slowly in the quagmires of disgust."
Oliver Wendell Holmes speaks of a man in the clothing business with an impressible temperament who let a customer "slip through his fingers one day without fitting him with a new garment. 'Ah!' said he to a friend of mine, who was standing by, 'if it hadn't been for that confounded headache of mine this morning, I'd have had a coat on that man, in spite of himself, before he left the store.' A passing throb only; but it deranged the nice mechanism required to persuade the accidental human being, x, into a given piece of broadcloth, a."
How many more happy days would a husband and wife spend together were it not for confounded headaches which cause foolish, bitter words to be spoken. If a man cannot do business when the nice mechanism of his body is deranged, neither can he be gentle and kind in the family circle. This is what Dr. Johnson meant when he said that a man is a villain when sick.
"Smelfungus," says Sterne, "had been the grand tour, and had seen nothing to admire; all was barren from Dan to Beersheba; and when I met him he fell foul of the Venus de Medici; and abused her ladyship like a common fish-fag. 'I will tell it,' cried he, 'I will tell it to the world!' 'You had better,' said Sterne, 'tell it to your physician.'" So too when a man falls foul of his wife, and abuses her ladyship like a common fish-fag because his liver is out of order, he had better go to a physician and take every means of clearing his clouded temper.
How much a husband can do by sympathy and kindness for a sick wife! Mrs. Carlyle used to say, "The very least attention from Carlyle just glorifies me. When I have one of my headaches, and the sensation of red-hot knitting-needles darting into my brain, Carlyle's way of expressing sympathy is to rest a heavy hand on the top of my head, and keep it there in perfect silence for several seconds, so that although I could scream with nervous agony, I sit like a martyr, smiling with joy at such a proof of profound pity from him." The truth is that happiness is the most powerful of tonics. By accelerating the circulation of the blood, it facilitates the performance of every function; and so tends alike to increase health when it exists, and to restore it when it has been lost.
If acts of kindness from a husband are necessary in all cases, they are especially so in cases of his wife's illness, from whatever cause arising, and most of all when there is a prospect of her becoming a mother. This is the time for him to show care, watchful tenderness, attention to all her wishes, and anxious efforts to quiet her fears. Any agitation or fatigue at such times may cause the remaining years of her life to be years of pain and weakness. If he value happiness in married life and would escape bitter self-reproach, the husband will be very careful of his wife when in this condition. And it is the duty of the young wife, on her part, to take care of her own health, because of the manner in which hers will affect the health of her expected child. And as the moral and mental nature of the child is scarcely less dependent on her than the physical, she should cherish only such mental frames and dispositions as she would like to see reproduced in her child. How much her husband can help or hinder her in doing so! Then when the child is born she ought if possible to give it the food which nature provides and which is its birthright. No other is so congenial, and the consequences of unnatural methods of feeding are sometimes most injurious to the bodies and minds of children.
In these hard times of great competition in every kind of business, it is a sad fact that many men have to overwork themselves, or at least fancy they have, in order to get a living for their families. But there are others who kill themselves by overwork and over-anxiety, for what? To amass more money than they can well spend, or to catch the soap-bubble called fame—
"And all to leave what with his tact he won,
To that unfeathered two-legged thing, a son."
Alas! that such men never think of His considerate words to His disciples who was the great Physician of the body as well as of the soul—"Come ye apart, and rest awhile." If they did they would be able to show to their friends at home what the Lord had done for them. Rest to their overstrung nerves would make them less peevish, discontented, and generally disagreeable.
More open-air amusements, and more indoor gaiety, would save a great many failing brains and enfeebled hearts.
Of course health may be impaired quite as much by doing too little work as by doing too much. This truth was enforced by Thackeray, when, addressing a medical friend, he exclaimed, "Doctor, there is not in the whole of your pharmacopœia so sovereign a remedy as hard work." All depends upon the temperament and constitution. What kills one man cures another. General Sir Charles Napier, who was not physically a strong man, declared that for the first time he had discovered what total immunity from "malaise" meant when he took to working seventeen hours a day at Cephalonia, as acting Governor or Commissioner of the Ionian Islands.
Not all but by far the largest part of the cure of nervous depression rests with the patient. Change, exercise, fresh air, diet, tonics—all these together will not cure any one who gives up and gives way.
Above all, we should try to be cheerful. A clerical friend, at a celebrated watering-place, met a lady who seemed hovering on the brink of the grave. Her cheeks were hollow and wan, her manner listless, her step languid, and her brow wore the severe contraction so indicative both of mental and physical suffering, so that she was to all observers an object of sincere pity. Some years afterward he encountered this same lady; but so bright, and fresh, and youthful, so full of healthful buoyancy, and so joyous in expression, that he questioned the lady if he had not deceived himself with regard to identity. "Is it possible," said he, "that I see before me Mrs. B. who presented such a doleful appearance at the Springs several years ago?" "The very same." "And pray tell me the secret of your cure. What means did you use to attain to such vigour of mind and body, to such cheerfulness and rejuvenation?" "A very simple remedy," returned she, with a beaming face; "I stopped worrying and began to laugh; that was all."
We would call the attention of heads of families to the following mistakes which the "Sanitary Record" lately enumerated: "It is a mistake to labour when you are not in a fit condition to do so. To think that the more a person eats the healthier and stronger he will become. To go to bed at midnight and rise at daybreak, and imagine that every hour taken from sleep is an hour gained. To imagine that if a little work or exercise is good, violent or prolonged exercise is better. To conclude that the smallest room in the house is large enough to sleep in. To eat as if you only had a minute to finish the meal in, or to eat without an appetite, or continue after it has been satisfied, merely to satisfy the taste. To believe that children can do as much work as grown people, and that the more hours they study the more they learn. To imagine that whatever remedy causes one to feel immediately better (as alcoholic stimulants) is good for the system, without regard to the after-effects. To take off proper clothing out of season because you have become heated. To sleep exposed to a direct draught in any season. To think that any nostrum or patent medicine is a specific for all the diseases flesh is heir to."
There are few things more important to health than the due adjustment of play and work. The school at which a boy ten years of age is made to work at his tasks for the same time as a lad of sixteen ought to be avoided by all parents. If health is to be preserved in early youth, the child must be treated on the same principle as a foal would be. He, or she, must be allowed to a great extent to "run wild," and "lessons" must be carefully graduated to the bodily powers.
Those mothers who are inclined to dose their children too much should be reminded that it was during the days when physic flourished in the nursery that the greatest amount of disease was found. It is not by medicine, but by acting in accordance with natural laws, that health of body and health of mind and morals can be secured at home. Without a knowledge of such laws, the mother's love too often finds its recompense only in the child's coffin.
In the management of their children's health some mothers are guided by everybody and everything except by nature herself. And yet the child's healthy instincts are what alone should be followed.
Sir Samuel Garth, physician to George I., was a member of the Kit-Kat Club. Coming to the club one night, he said he must soon be gone, having many patients to attend; but some good wine being produced, he forgot them. Sir Richard Steele was of the party, and reminded him of the visits he had to pay. Garth pulled out his list, which amounted to fifteen, and said, "It's no great matter whether I see them to-night or not; for nine of them have such bad constitutions that all the physicians in the world can't save them; and the other six have such good constitutions that all the physicians in the world can't kill them."
Probably the carelessness of many people about their health may be explained in the same way. They think either that their constitutions are so good that nothing can injure them or else that they are so bad that nothing can make them better. And often it is a bottle of wine or some other indulgence of appetite that keeps health away. We have heard of a well-known character who, having had many severe attacks of gout, and who, getting into years, and having a cellar of old port wine, upon which he drew somewhat considerably, was advised by his physician to give up the port, and for the future to drink a certain thin claret not very expensive. Said the gentleman in reply to this suggestion: "I prefer my gout with my port, to being cured of my gout with that claret of yours!" Of a delicate man who would not control his appetite it was said, "One of his passions which he will not resist is for a particular dish, pungent, savoury, and multifarious, which sends him almost every night into Tartarus." Talking of the bad effects of late hours Sydney Smith said of a distinguished diner-out that it would be written on his tomb, "He dined late." "And died early," added Luttrell.
Such people ought to be told that in playing tricks with their health they are committing a very great sin. "Perhaps," says Mr. Herbert Spencer, "nothing will so much hasten the time when body and mind will both be adequately cared for, as a diffusion of the belief that the preservation of health is a duty. Few seem conscious that there is such a thing as physical morality. Men's habitual words and acts imply the idea that they are at liberty to treat their bodies as they please. Disorders entailed by disobedience to Nature's dictates, they regard simply as grievances, not as the effects of a conduct more or less flagitious. Though the evil consequences inflicted on their dependents, and on future generations, are often as great as those caused by crime; yet they do not think themselves in any degree criminal. It is true that, in the case of drunkenness, the viciousness of a bodily transgression is recognized; but none appear to infer that, if this bodily transgression is vicious, so too is every bodily transgression. The fact is, that all breaches of the laws of health are physical sins."
Certainly there are many great sufferers who are not responsible for their ailments, and sometimes they teach lessons of patience and resignation so well in the world and in their families, that their work is quite as valuable as that of the active and healthy. Robert Hall, being troubled with an acute disease which sometimes caused him to roll on the floor with agony, would rise therefrom, wiping from his brow the drops of sweat which the pain had caused, and, trembling from the conflict, ask, "But I did not complain—I did not cry out much, did I?"
Sydney Smith may have dined out more than was good for his health, but he never allowed infirmities to sour his temper. At the end of a letter to an old friend he adds playfully, "I have gout, asthma, and seven other maladies, but am otherwise very well." For the sake of domestic happiness let us preserve our health; but when we do get ill we should endeavour to bear it in this cheerful spirit.