Virginibus Puerisque | Page 5

marriage, if he is nothing else, your husband is always an old
friend." "I have many old friends," returned the other, "but I prefer
them to be nothing more." "Oh, perhaps I might PREFER that also!"
There is a common note in these three illustrations of the modern idyll;
and it must be owned the god goes among us with a limping gait and
blear eyes. You wonder whether it was so always; whether desire was
always equally dull and spiritless, and possession equally cold. I cannot
help fancying most people make, ere they marry, some such table of
recommendations as Hannah Godwin wrote to her brother William
anent her friend, Miss Gay. It is so charmingly comical, and so pat to
the occasion, that I must quote a few phrases. "The young lady is in
every sense formed to make one of your disposition really happy. She
has a pleasing voice, with which she accompanies her musical
instrument with judgment. She has an easy politeness in her manners,
neither free nor reserved. She is a good housekeeper and a good
economist, and yet of a generous disposition. As to her internal
accomplishments, I have reason to speak still more highly of them:
good sense without vanity, a penetrating judgment without a
disposition to satire, with about as much religion as my William likes,
struck me with a wish that she was my William's wife." That is about
the tune: pleasing voice, moderate good looks, unimpeachable internal
accomplishments after the style of the copy-book, with about as much
religion as my William likes; and then, with all speed, to church.
To deal plainly, if they only married when they fell in love, most
people would die unwed; and among the others, there would be not a
few tumultuous households. The Lion is the King of Beasts, but he is
scarcely suitable for a domestic pet. In the same way, I suspect love is
rather too violent a passion to make, in all cases, a good domestic
sentiment. Like other violent excitements, it throws up not only what is
best, but what is worst and smallest, in men's characters. Just as some
people are malicious in drink, or brawling and virulent under the
influence of religious feeling, some are moody, jealous, and exacting
when they are in love, who are honest, downright, good-hearted fellows
enough in the everyday affairs and humours of the world.

How then, seeing we are driven to the hypothesis that people choose in
comparatively cold blood, how is it they choose so well? One is almost
tempted to hint that it does not much matter whom you marry; that, in
fact, marriage is a subjective affection, and if you have made up your
mind to it, and once talked yourself fairly over, you could "pull it
through" with anybody. But even if we take matrimony at its lowest,
even if we regard it as no more than a sort of friendship recognised by
the police, there must be degrees in the freedom and sympathy realised,
and some principle to guide simple folk in their selection. Now what
should this principle be? Are there no more definite rules than are to be
found in the Prayer-book? Law and religion forbid the bans on the
ground of propinquity or consanguinity; society steps in to separate
classes; and in all this most critical matter, has common sense, has
wisdom, never a word to say? In the absence of more magisterial
teaching, let us talk it over between friends: even a few guesses may be
of interest to youths and maidens.
In all that concerns eating and drinking, company, climate, and ways of
life, community of taste is to be sought for. It would be trying, for
instance, to keep bed and board with an early riser or a vegetarian. In
matters of art and intellect, I believe it is of no consequence. Certainly
it is of none in the companionships of men, who will dine more readily
with one who has a good heart, a good cellar, and a humorous tongue,
than with another who shares all their favourite hobbies and is
melancholy withal. If your wife likes Tupper, that is no reason why you
should hang your head. She thinks with the majority, and has the
courage of her opinions. I have always suspected public taste to be a
mongrel product, out of affectation by dogmatism; and felt sure, if you
could only find an honest man of no special literary bent, he would tell
you he thought much of Shakespeare bombastic and most absurd, and
all of him written in very obscure English and wearisome to read. And
not long ago I was able to lay by my lantern in content, for I found the
honest man. He was