Virginibus Puerisque | Page 3

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Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Scanned and proofed by David Price, email [email protected]

"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE"

Contents Virginibus Puerisque Crabbed Age and Youth An Apology
For Idlers Ordered South Aes Triplex El Dorado The English Admirals
Some Portraits by Raeburn Child's Play Walking Tours Pan's Pipes A
Plea For Gas Lamps
CHAPTER I
- "VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE"

WITH the single exception of Falstaff, all Shakespeare's characters are
what we call marrying men. Mercutio, as he was own cousin to
Benedick and Biron, would have come to the same end in the long run.
Even Iago had a wife, and, what is far stranger, he was jealous. People
like Jacques and the Fool in LEAR, although we can hardly imagine
they would ever marry, kept single out of a cynical humour or for a

broken heart, and not, as we do nowadays, from a spirit of incredulity
and preference for the single state. For that matter, if you turn to
George Sand's French version of AS YOU LIKE IT (and I think I can
promise you will like it but little), you will find Jacques marries Celia
just as Orlando marries Rosalind.
At least there seems to have been much less hesitation over marriage in
Shakespeare's days; and what hesitation there was was of a laughing
sort, and not much more serious, one way or the other, than that of
Panurge. In modern comedies the heroes are mostly of Benedick's way
of thinking, but twice as much in earnest, and not one quarter so
confident. And I take this diffidence as a proof of how sincere their
terror is. They know they are only human after all; they know what gins
and pitfalls lie about their feet; and how the shadow of matrimony
waits, resolute and awful, at the cross-roads. They would wish to keep
their liberty; but if that may not be, why, God's will be done! "What,
are you afraid of marriage?" asks Cecile, in MAITRE GUERIN. "Oh,
mon Dieu, non!" replies Arthur; "I should take chloroform." They look
forward to marriage much in the same way as they prepare themselves
for death: each seems inevitable; each is a great Perhaps, and a leap
into the dark, for which, when a man is in the blue devils, he has
specially to harden his heart. That splendid scoundrel, Maxime de
Trailles, took the news of marriages much as an old man hears the
deaths of his contemporaries. "C'est desesperant," he cried, throwing
himself down in the arm-chair at Madame Schontz's; "c'est desesperant,
nous nous marions tous!" Every marriage was like another gray hair on
his head; and the jolly church bells seemed to taunt him with his fifty
years and fair round belly.
The fact is, we are much more afraid of life than our ancestors, and
cannot find it in our hearts either to marry or not to marry. Marriage is
terrifying, but so is a cold and forlorn old age. The friendships of men
are vastly agreeable, but they are insecure. You know all the time that
one friend will marry and put you to the door; a second accept a
situation in China, and become no more to you than a name, a
reminiscence, and an occasional crossed letter, very laborious to read; a
third will take up with some religious crotchet and treat you to sour

looks thence-forward. So, in one way or another, life forces men apart
and breaks up the goodly fellowships for ever. The very flexibility and
ease which make men's friendships so agreeable while they endure,
make them the easier to destroy and forget. And a man who has a few
friends, or one who has a dozen (if there be any one so wealthy on this
earth), cannot forget on how precarious a base his happiness reposes;
and how by a stroke or two of fate - a death, a few light words, a piece
of stamped paper, a woman's bright eyes - he may be left, in a month,
destitute of all. Marriage is certainly a perilous remedy. Instead of on
two or three, you stake your happiness on one life only. But still, as the
bargain is more explicit